
Class £^ /g4 




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THE 



SCOTCH-IRISH 



IN 



AMERICA. 



BY 



SAMUEL SWETT GREEN 



THE 



SCOTCH-IKISH 



AMERICA. 



V 
SAMUEL SWETT GREEN. 



a paper read as the report of the council of the american 

Antiquarian Society, at the Semi-Annual Meeting, April 24, 

1895, with Correspondence called out by the paper. 




Wovrcatrv, Pa,$^., m. ^. ^. 

P Jl E S S OF CHARLES HAMILTON 
311 MAIN STREET. 

1895. 



THE SCOTCH-IIUSH IN AMEEICA.' 



A TRIBUTE is due from the Puritan to the Scotch-Irishmcan,^ 
and it is becoming in this Society, which has its headquar- 
ters in the heart of New England, to render that tribute. 

The story of the Scotsmen who swaruied across the nar- 
row body of water which separates Scotland from Ireland, in 
the seventeenth century, and who came to America in the 
eighteenth century, in large numbers, is of perennial inter- 
est. For hundreds of years before the beginning of the 
seventeenth century the Scot had been going forth contin- 
ually over Europe in search of adventure and gain. As a 
rule, says one who knows him well, "he turned, his steps 
where fighting was to be had, and the pay for killing 
was reasonably good." ^ The English wars had made his 
countrymen poor, but they had also made them a nation of 
soldiers. 

Remember the "Scotch Archers" and the "Scotch 
Guardsmen" of France, and the delightful story of Quentin 
Durward, by Sir Walter Scott. Call to mind the "Scots 
Brigade," which dealt such hard blows in the contest in 
Holland with the splendid Spanish infantry which Parma 
and Spinola led, and recall the pikemen of the great 
Gustavus. The Scots were in the vanguard of many a 



' For acknowledgments regarding llie sources of information contained in 
this paper, not made in footnotes, read the Bibliographical note at its end. 

" The Scotch-Irisli, as 1 understand the meaning of the term, are Scotchmen 
who emigrated to Ireland and such descendants of these emigrants as had not 
through intermarriage with the Irish proper, or others, lost their Scotch char- 
acteristics. Both emigrants and their descendants, If they remained long iu 
Ireland, experienced certain changes, apart from those which an; brought 
about by mixture of blood, through the iutlueuce of new surroundings. 

3 Harrison, John. The Scot in Ulster, p. I. 



European host. Their activity showed itself in trade also. 
"In the Hanse towns and from the Baltic to the Mediter- 
ranean every busy centre and trading town knows the canny 
Scot.-'i 

The adventurous spirit of the Scotsman had hitherto 
shown itself in war and in trade ; it is now to show itself in 
colonization. Our interest to-day is in the colonies which 
Scotchmen established in the north of Ireland in the seven- 
teenth century, and in the great emigration from those colo- 
nies to America in the eighteenth century. Large tracts of 
land in Ulster had been laid waste, and James the First of 
England formed plans for peopling them with colonies of 
Englishmen and Scotchmen. Hugh Montgomery, the laird 
of Braidstane, afterwards Lord Montgomery of the Ards, 
and James Hamilton, afterwards Viscount Clandeboye (a 
title now borne by his descendant, the Marquis of Duficrin 
and Ava, formerly Governor-General of Canada and Vice- 
roy of India, who as an Irish baron is Lord DufFerin and 
Clandeboye), led colonies into the northern portion of 
County Down in 1606. About the same time plantations, 
which afterwards became peculiarly Scottish, were made 
in Antrim. Then followed what is known as the "Great 
plantation," in 1610. Bead Scott's Fortunes of Nigel, it has 
been said, and " you see the poverty of the old land north 
of the Tweed, and the neediness of the flock of supplicants 
who followed James to London." That neediness and the 
poverty of their land led Scotsmen to Ireland, also. 

"The plantations in County Down and County Antrim, 
thorough as they were as far as they went, were limited in 
scope, in comparison with the ' Great plantation in Ulster' 
for which James I.'s reign will be forever remembered in 
Ireland."- 

Early in the seventeenth century " all northern Ireland, 



ij. S. Maclutosh in The Making of the Ulsterman, Second Scotch-Irish 
Congress, p. 89. 
2Harrisou,p. 34. 



■ — Londonderry, Donegal, Tyrone, Cavan, Armagh, and 
Fermanagh, — passed at one fell swoop into the hands of the 
crown." 1 These lands James proceeded to people with Eng- 
lishmen and Scotchmen, as he had before planted Scottish 
and English colonies in Down and Antrim. Sir William 
Petty states, "that a very large emigration had taken place 
from Scotland after Cromwell settled the country in 1652."^ 
"He takes the total population" of Ireland in 1672 "at 
1,100,000, and calculates that 800,000 were Irish, 200,000 
English, and 100,000 Scots. Of course the English were 
scattered all over Ireland, the Scots concentrated in 
Ulster."^ Lecky says that "for some years after the 
Revolution," meaning, of course, the English Revolution 
of 1688, "a steady stream of Scotch Presbyterians had 
poured into the country, attracted by the cheapness of 
the farms and by the new openings for trade." "^ The end 
of the seventeenth century probably saw the last of the 
large emigration of Scots into Ulster, 

The quiet of the Scotch immigrants was disturbed by 
various events durins: the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
turies. War disturbed their quiet. The Irish rebellion of 
1641 caused them much suffering. It " dragged its slow 
length along" for years, and "until Cromwell crossed in 
1650, and in one dreadful campaign established the rule of 
the English Parliament."'' The Revolution of 1688 was 
long and bloody, in Ireland. The sufferings of the Prot- 
estants in the north of Ireland who supported William 
the Third and opposed James the Second are well known. 



1 Harrison, p. 36. 
^ Ibid., p. 84. 

3 Ibid., pp. 83 and 84. See, too. Petty, Sir William. Political Survcj' of Ire- 
land in 1G72, pp. 9, 18, 20 (as quoted by Harrison). 

4 Lecky, W. E. H. Hist, of England in the 18th Century, Vol. 11., p. 400. 
Amer. ed., p. 430. " In 1715 Archbishop Syuge" (Synge's Letters, British Mu- 
seum Add. MSS., 6, 117, p. 50) " estimated at not less than 50,000 the number 
of Scotch families who had settled in Ulster since the Revolution."— Lecky, 
p. 401. Am. ed., p. 43G. 

6 Harrison, p. 79. 



6 

and Macaulay has rendered immortal the brave deeds of 
the defenders of Londonderry.^ 

The Scotch immigrants suffered from repression of trade 
and commerce. True, William III. encouraged the manu- 
facture of linen and induced colonies of Huguenots who 
were driven out of France by the Revocation of the Edict 
of Nantes to settle in northeast Ireland. " The first blow 
struck" in the repression of industries, " was an Act which 
forbade the exportation of cattle from Ireland to England ;^ 
the second, when by the fifteenth of Charles II., Ireland, 
which up to this time in commercial matters had been 
held as part of England, was brought under the Navigation 
Acts, and her ships treated as if belonging to foreigners."^ 

It was in the reign of William III. that the woollen manu- 
facture in Ireland was suppressed in the interest of the 
English manufacturer, and legislation which brought about 
this suppression was followed by "Acts forbidding the 
Irish to export their wool to any country save England — 
the English manufacturers desiring to get the wool of the 
sister kingdom at their own price.""* 

The Scotch immigrants in Ireland were mostly Presby- 
terians. Under the mild ecclesiastical rule of Archbishop 
Usher they prospered. Later they were persecuted, and in 
1704 the obnoxious Test Act was imposed by Queen Anne. 

Throughout their stay in Ireland the Scotch immigrants, 
while thoy have intermarried with the Huguenots and Puri- 
tan English to a certain extent, have not intermarried with 
the Celtic Irish and have preserved their Scotch character- 
istics.^ 



iMiicauliiy's History of England, Chap. XII. 

2 Lclaud's History of Ireland, Vol. III., p. MS. 

3 Harrison, p. 85. See, also, Macpherson's History of Commerce, Vol. III., 
p. 621, referred to by Harrison. 

4 Ibid., p. 88. Lecky, v. 2, pp. 210 and 211. Am. ed., pp. 229 and 230. 

5" Most of the great evils of Irish politics during the last two centuries have 
arisen from the fact that its different classes and creeds have never been really 
blended into one nation, that the repulsion of race or of religion has been 
stronger than the attraction of u common nationality, and that the full energies 



It is easy to see, after the recital of facts just given, why 
the Scotch settlers in Ulster became discontented, and large 
numbers of them emigrated to America in the eighteenth 
century. In addition to their sufferings from the repression 
of trade and commerce and from religious disabilities, agri- 
culture was in a miserable condition, and at times when 
land leases expired, the settlers could only renew them by 
paying a largely increased rent.^ The emigration to Amer- 
ica was very striking. Some of the Scottish settlers went 
before 1700, and very early in the eighteenth century, but 
the great bulk of the emigrants came to this country at two 
distinct periods of time : the first, from 1718 to the middle 
of the century; the second, from 1771 to 1773; although 
there was a gentle current westward between these two 
eras. In consequence of the famine of 1740 and 1741, it 
is stated that for "several years afterwards, 12,000 emi- 
grants annually left Ulster for the American plantations " ; 
while from 1771 to 1773, "the whole emigration froui 
Ulster is estimated at 30,000, of whom 10,000 are weavers."^ 

August 4, 1718, there arrived in Boston five small ships 



and intellect of the country have in consequence seldom or never been enlisted in 
a common cause." — Lecky , Vol. II., p. 405. Am. ed., pp. 440 and 441. Travellers 
tell us that to-day in sections of Ulster the population is Scotch and not Irish. 
Honorable Leonard A. Morrison of Canobic Lake, N. H., writes me, May 8, 
1895, as follows : " I am one of Scotch-Irish blood and my ancestor came with 
Rev. McGregor of Londonderry" (N. H.), " and neither they nor any of their 
descendants were willing to be called ' merely Irish.' I have twice visited the 
parish of Aghadowey, Co. Londonderry, from whicli they came, in Ireland, and 
all that locality is filled, not with ' Irish ' but with Scotch-Irish, and this is pure 
Scotch blood to-day, after more than 200 years." Mr. Morrison is the author 
of a history of the Scotch-Irish town of Windham. N. H., aud of several other 
valuable aud interesting books, most of them largely genealogical. 

1 " At the time of the Kevolution, when great portions of the country lay 
waste and when the whole framework of society was shattered, much Irish 
land had been let on lease at very low rents to English, aud especially to Scotch 
Protestants. About 1717 and 1718 these leases began to fall in. Rents were 
usually doubled, and often trebled . . . For nearly three-quarters of a century 
the drain of this energetic Protestant population continued."— Lecky, Vol. 2, 
p. 260. Amer. ed., pp. 283, 284. 

2 Harrison, pp. 90, 91. Reid, James. History of the Presbyterian Church in 
Ireland, Ch. XXVI. Lecky, v. 2, p. 261. Am. ed., pp. 2S4 and 285. (Lecky 
refers to Killen's Ecclesiastical History, IL, 261, 262.) 



containing probably about seven hundred and fifty emigrants 
from the north of Ireland.^ These were nearly all Scotch- 
Irish. Their arrival was not unexpected, for, before coming, 
they had sent over a messenger to Governor Shute and been 
encouraged to come. A portion of the emigrants had re- 
solved to unite in forming a settlement, and to place them- 
selves under the pastoral care of Rev. James MacGregor, 
a Presbyterian minister who came over with them. Six- 
teen or twenty families from among these, embarked in a 
brigantine and sailed east in search of a suitable site for a 
town, the remainder going for the present to Andover and 
Dracut. The party in the brigantine explored a considerable 
portion of the coast of Maine and, as cold weather came on, 
concluded to winter in Casco Bay at Falmouth, now Port- 
land. They had a hard winter there and when spring came 
determined, with some exceptions, to seek a place of settle- 
ment with a milder and otherwise more agreeable climate. 
They sailed west, entered the Merrimack River and came 
to Haveihill. Here they heard of the town of Nutfield, 
now Londonderry, New Hampshire. Having examined the 
place, they determined to settle there. Here they were 
joined by the members of their party who had gone tempo- 
rarily into the country, including Rev. Mr. MacGregor, and 
laid the foundations of a prosperous town. Londonderry 
grew rapidly, Scotch-Irishmen already in this country flock- 
ing to it, and emigrants of that race coming from the north 
of Ireland to New England generally choosing it as their 
place of settlement. 

Another portion of the emigrants who came to Boston in 
1718 went to Worcester, Massachusetts, to live. Professor 
Arthur L. Perry, of Williamstown, whose father was born 
in Worcester and whose family is one of the old families of 
the place, himself a descendant of one of the Scotch-Irish 
settlers in Worcester and an interested student of the quali- 



1 Perry, Arthur L. The Scotch-Irish in New England. In Scotch-Irish 
in America, Second Congress, p. 109. 



9 

ties and career of that portion of the early inhabitants of 
the town, estimates that more than 200 Scotch-Irish people ' 
went to Worcester in 1718; they probably outnumbering 
the population already there, who are represented as occu- 
pying fifty-eight log houses. ~ 

At the time when these inhabitants went to Worcester, 
the people of that place were making a third attempt 
at settlement, they having been dispersed twice before 
by the Indians ; and the town was not organized until 
September, 1722. It appears by the town records that some 
of the officers chosen in the earliest town meetings were 
Scotch-Irishmen. That element of the population was not 
popular, however, and although the government of the 
Province was srlad to have this addition to the number of 
the inhabitants of a frontier town exposed to the depreda- 
tions of Indians, and although the older occupants of the 
place may have looked with favor at first upon the coming 
of the Scotch-Irish, the newcomers soon came to be disliked 
and were treated with marked inhospitality. They Were of a 
different race ; there was an especial prejudice against the 
Irish which worked to their disadvantage, although they 
were in reality, most of them, Scotchmen, who had merely 
lived in Ireland. The habits of the foreigners were difierent 
from those of the older inhabitants. They differed also in the 
form of their religion, and although staunch Protestants the 
Congregationalists, who made up the earlier settiers, were 
not ready to tolerate the Presbyterianism of the newcomers. 

The Scotch-Irish were treated so inhospitably in Worces- 
ter that, while a considerable number of them remained 
there, the larger portion went away, some to Coleraine, many 
to Pelham ;^ and, after the destruction of the church they 
were building, many others to Western (now Warren), 

1 Scotch-Irish in America, Second Congress, p. Ill, comp. with p. 110. 

2 Lincoln's History of Worcester, p. 40 (which gives the Projjrietary Records 
as its authority). 

3 See, particularly for Telham, Holland. J. G. History of Western Massa- 
chusetts. 



10 

Blandford and other towns where they could live more com- 
fortably and enjoy a larger liberty. They introduced the 
potato, so generally known in this vicinity as the Irish 
potato, into Worcester ^ as well as into Andover, Massachu- 
setts, and other towns and parts of the country where they 
settled. They are said to have made spinning fashionable 
in Boston. 

Dr. Matthew Thornton, the distinguished New Hamp- 
shire statesman, one of the signers of the Declaration of 
Independence, was brought to this country by his father 
when only two or three years old. He received an " aca- 
demical " ^ education in Worcester and after studying medi- 
cine settled down in Londonderry, New Hampshire, to 
practise his profession.^ At the second annual town meet- 
ing in Worcester, held in March, 1724, James McClellan, 
the great-great-great Scotch-Irish grandfather of General 
George B. McClellan, was chosen a constable. Honorable 
George T. Bigelow, a former Chief Justice of the Supreme 
Judicial Court of Massachusetts, through his grandmother, 
the wife of Colonel Timothy Bigelow, a revolutionary soldier 
of local reputation, was descended from one of the members 
of the Scotch-Irish colony in Worcester. Professor Perry 
has also announced the discovery that the great botanist 

1 According to tradition, the potato was introduced into Worcester by one 
of a few families of Celtic-Irish who accompanied the Scotch-Irish when they 
went to Worcester. Although the potato is indigenous in the southern portion 
of America and was carried from this continent to Europe in the 16th century, 
little or nothing seems to have been known about it in New England when the 
band of Scotch-Irish came to Boston in ITIS. Some interesting stories are told 
by Lincoln in his History of Worcester (p. 49), and by Parker in his History of 
Londonderry, N. H. (p. 49), about the fears of early settlers of Worcester 
Massachusetts, that the potato was poisonous; and about ignorance of the 
character oft he vegetable, shown by settlers in Andover in their cooking the 
balls of the plant instead of the tubers. See, also, Lewis's History of Lynn, 
Massachusetts, "Annals," year 1718. The potato does not seem to have been 
generally used in Ireland until many years after 1718. Naturally the common 
potato, having been introduced by emigrants from Ireland, came to be quite 
generally denominated the Irish potato, to distinguish it from the sweet potato. 
That name is used to a considerable extent to-day. 

2 Parker's History of Londonderry, p. 248. 
3I6jcZ.,pp. 247, 248. 



11 

Asa Gray was a great-great-grandson of the first Scotch- 
Irish Matthew Gray of Worcester. 

There are in Worcester to-day two old houses which arc 
believed to have been built and occupied by the early 
Scotch-Irish residents, Andrew McFarland and Robert 
Blair. 

It is an interesting fact that Abraham Blair and William 
Caldwell, of Worcester, and several of the inhabitants of 
Londonderry, N. H., as survivors of the brave men Avho 
defended Londonderry, Ireland, in 1(589, were, with their 
heirs, freed from taxation, by Act of Parliament, in British 
Provinces, and occupied what were here known until the 
Revolution as " exempt farms." 

As has been related, a few of the Scotch-Irish emigrants 
who came to Boston in the vessels which arrived August 4, 
1718, settled in Maine, a large portion went to London- 
derry, N. H., and two hundred or so to Worcester. A con- 
siderable number, however, remained in Boston, and, uniting 
with those of their countrymen of their own faith already 
there, formed the religious society which was known as the 
Presbyterian Church in Long Lane — afterwards Federal 
Street. That Church became Congregational in 178(5, and, 
on April 4, 1787, Dr. Jeremy Belknap, the founder and 
one of its officers until his death, of the Massachusetts His- 
torical Society, was installed as its pastor. This is the 
same society which later had William Ellery Channing for 
its minister, and the successor to which is the Unitarian 
body which worships in the stone New England meeting- 
house on Arlington Street. 

In 1719 and 1720 several hundred families of Scotch- 
Irish from the north of Ireland were landed on the shores 
of the Kennebec River in Maine in accordance with arrange- 
ments made by an Irish gentleman, Robert Temple.^ They 



1 Honorable Edward L. Pierce calls my attention to Winsor's Memorial His- 
tory of Boston, Vol. 2, p. 540, where it is stated that our " Captain Kobert 
Temple came over in 1717 with a number of Scotch-Irish emigrants." 



12 

were soon dispersed by Indians and a large portion of the 
settlers went to Pennsylvania, and considerable numbers to 
Londonderry and other places. Some remained in Maine, 
however. This immigration is of particular interest to 
members of this Society, for its conductor, Robert Temple, 
was the ancestor of our second president, Thomas Lindall 
Winthrop, and his son, Robert Charles Winthrop, who has 
for so long a time taken a marked interest in our proceed- 
insfs and whose loss is fresh in our memories to-day. 
r] I n f From lp29 to 1632 Colonel Dunbar was governor of 
Sagadahoc, a tract of land lying between the Kennebec and 
St. Croix rivers. He was a Scotch-Irishman, and made 
some of his countrymen large owners of land in the terri- 
tory under him. They in turn introduced, in the course of 
two or three years, one hundred and JBfty families into the 
territory. These were mostly Scotch-Irish, and came partly 
from older settlements in Massachusetts and New Hamp- 
shire and partly from Ireland. Numerous descendants of 
the settlers are to be found to-day in the territory which 
Dunbar governed, and others' are scattered over the whole 
State of Maine. 

Samuel Waldo, a member of a family well known in 
Boston and Worcester, was probably the last person to 
introduce a colony of the Scotch-Irish people into Maine 
prior to the Revolution. He owned large tracts of land 
between the Penobscot and St. George rivers. His first 
settlers, who went upon his lands in 1735, were Scotch- 
Irish, some recent immigrants, some who had been in the 
country since 1718. Their posterity are excellent citizens. 
Some of the persons wrecked in the " Grand Design " from 
the north of Ireland, on Mt. Desert, settled on Waldo's 
lands. In 1753, Samuel Waldo formed in Scotland a com- 
pany of sixty adults and a number of children to settle on 
his possessions. 

Our lamented Scotch-Irish associate. Governor Charles 
H. Bell, of Exeter, N. H., in the address which he made 



13 

at the 150th anniversary of the settlement of old Nutfield 
(Londonderry), June 10, 18G9, calls attention to the fact of 
"the prodigious increase in numbers which the descendants 
of the early Londonderry stock have attained, in the four or 
five generations which have passed away since the colony, of 
such slender proportions, was formed." " It is estimated," 
he said, " by persons best qualified to pronounce upon the 
subject, that the aggregate, in every section, would now 
fall'little short of 5V',000 souls."' 

Certain it is that a large portion of the inhabitants of 
New Hampshire and Maine, and a considerable portion of 
those in Massachusetts, as well as many persons in Ver- 
mont, Rhode Island and Connecticut have had Scotch-Irish 
ancestors. When this people has settled in some part of 
our country it has sent out colonies. Parker, the historian 
of Londonderry, says that "during the period of twenty- 
five years preceding the Revolution, ten distinct settlements 
were made by emigrants from Londonderry, all of which 
have become towns of influence and importance in the 
Statc."2 

In the first third of the seventeenth century Sir William 
Alexander, a favorite of James the First, tried to found a 
new Scotland in America. The only existing memorial of 
that attempt is the name of Nova Scotia.^ A more success- 
ful effort was made after the forced evacuation of the 
French from that province in 1755. About the year 1760, 
a party of Scotch-Irishmen, many of them from London- 
derry, N. H., started a permanent settlement at Truro. 
Among the settlers from Londonderry were several Archi- 
balds, members of a family which has held a distinguished 
place in the public life of Nova Scotia.'* Among the pio- 



1 The Loudondtiiry Celebration, p. IG. 

- Parker, Edward L. The History of Londonderry, p. 99. 

s For an account of the work done in America under the auspices of Sir 
William Alexander, see Proceedings and Transactions of the lloyal Society of 
Canada, for the year 1892, Vol. X., Section 2, pp. 79-107. 

* Parker's Londonderry, p. 200. 



14 

neers was Captain William Blair also, a son of Colonel 
Robert Blair, of Worcester, Massachusetts, and grandson of 
Colonel Robert Blair, one of the defenders of Londonderry, 
Ireland.^ Other Scotch-Irish settlers followed, and their 
descendants became numerous, and peopled neighboring 
towns. 

October 9, 1761, Colonel Alexander McNutt, an agent of 
the British government, arrived in Halifax with more than 
300 settlers from the north of Ireland. In the followins: 
spring some of these went to Londonderry, Onslow, and 
Truro. ^ September 15, 1773, the "Hector," the first emi- 
grant ship from Scotland to come to Nova Scotia, arrived in 
the harbor of Pictou. The pioneers who came in that vessel 
formed the beginning of a stream of emigrants from Scot- 
land which flowed over the county of Pictou, the eastern por- 
tions of the province, Cape Breton, Prince Edward Island, 
portions of New Brunswick and even the upper provinces.^ 
A large portion of these emigrants, however, came from 
the Highlands of Scotland, and, although they formed a 
valuable part of the population of Nova Scotia and other 
provinces, were of a somewhat different blood from the 
Lowland Scotch and their matured countrymen, the 
Scotch-Irish. 

A very considerable portion of the people of Canada are 
of the Scotch-Irish race. There are in ever}' province, it 
is said, centres almost entirely settled by people of that 
extraction. That is the case with Colchester County in 
Nova Scotia, in which Truro, of which I have spoken, is 
situated. It is so with Simcoe County in Ontario. Rev. 
Stuart Acheson, who was a settled pastor in the last named 
county for ten years, states that in his "First Essa Church"'* 
all the families but one were Scotch-Irish. New Brunswick 



1 Miller, Thomas. Historical aud Genealogical Record of the first settlers of 
Colchester County, etc., p. 1G7. 

2 Miller, p. 15. 

3 Patterson, George. History of the County of Tictou, Nova Scotia, p. 82. 
*3d Scotch-Irish Cong., p. 210. 



15 

has her share of this race. It should be added, that the 
Counties in the Dominion of Canada in which this people 
have lived have been leaders in civilization. 

There is an incident in Canadian history in which two 
distinguished Scotch-Irishmen figured conspicuously. Sir 
Guy Carleton, whom we remember in the United States as 
the Commander-in-Chief of tlae British Army at the close 
of the Revolution, was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of 
Quebec in 1767, and while holding that office earned for 
himself the title of Saviour of Canada. He was born at 
Strabane, in the County of Tyrone, in Ireland. Eichard 
Montgomery,. his companion in arms at the siege of Quebec 
when it was taken by Wolfe, was born not more than seven 
miles away, at Conroy.^ These two Scotch-Irishmen, fel- 



iThis statement and several particulars of the incidents in the lives of 
Carleton and Montgomery given immediately after were taken from a paper 
entitled The Scotch-Irish in Canada, by Rev. Stuart Aeheson, M.A., of 
Toronto, in The Scotch-Irish in America, Third Cong., pp. 195-212. John 
Armstrong, the writer of the life of Richard Montgomery in The Library of 
American Biography, conducted by Jared Sparks, states that Richard and his 
two brothers were sons of Thomas Montgomery of Conroy House. The 
father does not seem to have owned that place, however; it came to his son 
Alexander from his cousin. (See Burke's Landed Gentry [ISSG], Vol. II., 
p. 12SS.) The late Mr. Henry Manners Chichester states in the article 
" Montgomery, Richard," in Dictionary of National Biography, that the latter 
was born at Swords, near Felti-im, Co. Dublin. One cannot help wonder- 
ing whether Mr. Aeheson, if he has not merely followed Armstrong or some 
other biographer, has not confounded Richard Montgomery with his elder 
brother Alexander. The susiiicion arises readily because cruel acts said 1o 
have been performed in Canada by Alexander Montgomery were ascribed to 
Richard (see Montcalm and AVolfe, by Francis Parkman, Vol. II., p. 261). Of 
course it is not impossible that the statement of Mr. Aeheson, although it 
may not be strictly true, leaves a correct impression, for Richard Montgomery 
may have spent considerable portions of his younger days with his brother 
at Conroy. For Richard Montgomery see, as above, Montgomery of Beaulieu, 
Burke's Landed Gentry (1S8G), Vol. II., p. 12SS. See, also, "Ancestry of 
General Richard Montgomery," by Thomas H. Montgomery, in the " New 
York Genealogical and Biographical Record" (July, 1S71), where, it is 
stated, his relationship to the ancestral Scottish family is traced. For Guy 
Carleton, see Burke's Peerage, under Lord Dorchester. It is very ch'flicult to 
be perfectly accurate, with information now readily accessible, in respect to 
statements regarding the Scotch-Irish, and it is evident that men who came 
from the north of Ireland, or descendants from such persons, have been not 
infrequently claimed as of Scotch extraction, without sufficient investigation, 



16 

low-soldiers at first, became formidable foes later. In the 
latter part of the year 1775, General Montgomery, as is 
well known, led an army of the disaffected colonies into 
Canada. Guy Carleton was in command of the Canadian 
forces which opposed him. They were both brave and able 
men. Montgomery had the advantage at first ; he took 
Montreal and other places, and succeeded in placing his 
army between Carleton's troops and Quebec. The latter 
general's position seemed desperate. But he was equal to 
the occasion. You have often heard the story of his action 
at this juncture of affairs. Disguised as a French Canadian 
peasant or as a fisherman, with a faithful aide-de-camp 
also disguised, he got into a little boat to go down the St. 
Lawrence to Quebec. He reached Three Rivers, and found 
it full of the enemy. He and his companion stayed long 
enough in the place to take some refreshments and then, 
unrecognized, continued their journey. Finally they over- 
hauled two schooners flying the British flag, were taken 
aboard and carried to Quebec. Montgomery united with 
Benedict Arnold, who had made a futile attempt to take the 
citadel of Quebec, at Pointe aux Trembles and, together, 
they proceeded to make another attempt to take Quebec. 
They reached the Plains of Abraham, and demanded its 
surrender. Carleton declined to surrender. After battering 
the walls of the citadel for a short time ineftectually, 
Montgomery determined to storm the town. You recall the 



and when they had but little Scotch blood. Many of the Presbyterians of the 
north of Ireland were of Huguenot, Welsh, English, and other extractions. 
I have taken reasonable pains to be accurate, but cannot hope that I have been 
perfectly so. Two things are evident, however, namely, that very large num- 
bers of emigrants from Ireland of Scotch blood came to this country in the ISth 
century, and that they exerted a great influence here for good, particularly in 
the Southern Middle and Southern Atlantic States. It may also be added, 
without disparagement of the good qualities of men of other extractions, that 
the powerful and beneficent influence which they exerted was largely the 
result of peculiarly Scottish characteristics. It is also not improbable that 
many persons without Scotch blood in their veins came from being trained in 
childhood and boyhood in Scotch communities, to have what we recognize as 
Scotch characteristics. 



17 

failure of the attempt, and the tragic end of Montgomery. 
As he and his men came under the fire of the enemy its 
cannon greeted them with a destructive discharge, and the 
brave general and many of his men were hiid low in death. ^ 
After the battle Carleton sought out, amid the winter snow, 
the body of his fellow-countryman and neighbor, and, pay- 
ing the tribute of one Scotch-Irishman to another Scotch- 
Irishman, had it buried with military honors. 

In 1682, William Pcnn interested a number of promi- 
nent Scotchmen in a scheme for colonizing the eastern 
section of New Jersey. "These Scotchmen," says Douglas 
Campbell, " sent over a number of settlers who have largely 
given character to this sturdy little State, not the least of 
their achievements being the building-up, if not the nominal 
founding, of Princeton College, which has contributed so 
largely to the scholarship of America."^ 

While considerable numbers of the Scotch-Irish emigrated 
to New England in the great exodus from Ireland during 
the fifty or sixty years prior to the American Revolution, 
the great body of those coming here entered the continent 
by Avay of Philadelphia. Penn's Colony was more hospit- 
able to immigrants of faiths differing from the prevalent 
belief of its inhabitants, than were most of the New Enofland 
provinces. 

Then, too, the Scotch-Irish emigrants were mostly 
farmers, and did not find New England so favorable from 
an agricultural point of view as some of the middle and 
southern colonies. 

Immigrants came in such numbers to Philadelphia as to 
frighten James Logan, the Scotch-Irish ^ Quaker Governor 



1 Scoteli-Irish in America, Tliird Cong., p. 202. (Paper by Stuart Acheson.) 
Tlie writer would seem to have been uiistal<eu in supposing that Montgomery 
was killed by shot fired from the guns of Fort Diamond on the summit of the 
citadel. 

- Baird, Rev. Robert, Religion in the United States of America, p. 154, as 
referred to by Campbell, Vol. II., p. 484. 

3 Professor George Macloskie in Scotch-Irish in America, Third Cong., p. 97. 
2 



18 

of Pennsylvania from 1699 to 1749. He complains in 1725 
that "it looks as if Ireland were to send all her inhab- 
itants hither ; if they will continue to come, they will 
make themselves proprietors of the province."' The bold 
stream of settlers who came to Philadelphia, flowed west- 
ward and occupied considerable portions of the province of 
Pennsylvania. 

It is said of Pittsburg that it is Scotch -Irish in " sub- 
stantial origin, in complexion and history, — Scotch-Irish 
in the countenances of the living and the records of the 
dead." 2 

It is estimated that at the time of the Revolution one- 
third of the population of Pennsylvania was Scotch-Irish. 

A large portion of the emigrants who came from the 
north of Ireland to Philadelphia, went south. This was 
especially the case after Braddock's defeat in 1755, made" 
the Indians bold and aggressive in the west. 

A very large portion of the people in the South Atlantic 
States are of Scotch-Irish extraction. 

During many years of the eighteenth century a stream 
of emigrants flowed south, through Maryland, Virginia, 
North Carolina, South Carolina, and across the Savannah 
river, into Georgia. Their movements were parallel with 
the lines of the Blue Ridge. 

In Maryland they settled, mainly, in the narrow slip of 
land in the western part of the State, although they were 
to be found scattered through all portions of the province. 

In the latter part of the seventeenth and the earlier 
years of the eighteenth centuries there were many Scotch- 
Irish residents in Virginia, east of the Blue Ridge moun- 
tains ; some were even settled west of that range. In 
1738 began a movement which completely filled the valley 

iMacloskie, in First Scotch-Irish Congress, p. 95. Professor Macloskie 
speaks of Logan as a Scotch-Irish Quaker who was " a native of County 
Armagh, Ireland." 

•■^The Scotch-Irish in Western Pennsylvania. John Dalzell, in Second 
Scotch-Irish Congress, p. 175. 



19 

west of the Blue Ridge, from Pennsylvania to North 
Carolina, with men of that race, excepting the lower por- 
tion, which was occupied by Germans. 

In the year 1736, Henry McCuUock, from the province 
of Ulster, obtained' a grant of 64,000 acres in the present 
County of Duplin, North Carolina, and introduced upon 
it between three tind four thousand of his Scotch-Irish 
countrymen from the north of Ireland. 

Besides the large number of emigrants of this nationality 
who came, through Virginia from Pennsylvania, into 
North Carolina, many ships filled with Scotch-Irish passen- 
gers from the north of Ireland came into Charleston and 
other southern ports, and the emigrants moving north met 
those coming south from Pennsylvania and settled with 
them in North Carolina and other southern States. 

Our associate, William Wirt Henry, in speaking of the 
Scotch-Irish, says: "So great was the population of the 
race in North Carolina before the Revolution, that they 
may be said to have given direction to her history. With 
their advent, began the educational history of the State. "^ 

Dr. David Ramsay, an ardent patriot in Revolutionary 
times, like the New Hampshire physician, Matthew 
Thornton, wrote much, as is well known, about the history 
of South Carolina. He says, as quoted by Henry, in 
speaking of pre-revolutionary times, that "scarce a ship 
sailed from any of 'the ports of Ireland' for Charleston, 
that was not crowded Avith men, women, and children." 
He speaks, too, of a thousand emigrants who came in a 
single year from Pennsylvania and Virginia, driving their 
horses, cattle and hogs before them and who were assigned 
places in the western woods of the province. These, says 
Henry, were Scotch-Irish. The}'^ were distinguished by 
economy and industry, and the portion of the province 
occupied by them soon became its most populous part. 



1 The Seotch-Irisb of the South, by William Wirt Henry, in First Scotch- 
Irish Congress, pp. 123, 124. 



20 

Eamsay says, that to this element in the population, 
" South Carolina is indebted for much of its early litera- 
ture. A great proportion of its physicians, clergymen, 
lawyers and schoolmasters were from North Britain." ^ 

The early settlers of South Carolina were largely Hugue- 
nots ; the province seems to have been generously peopled, 
too, by the Scotch-Irish, a race which was connected by a 
religious tie to the Huguenots, both being warm Calvinists. 

The prosperity of Georgia has been largely owing to 
Scotch-Irish settlers and their descendants. 

The pioneers of Kentucky were mainly from Virginia 
and North Carolina, and its population is largely Scotch- 
Irish in its ancestry. The first settlers of Tennessee crossed 
over the mountains from North Carolina and with subse- 
quent emigrants made that State one of those, a very large 
portion of whose people are of the same race. Mississippi 
and Alabama, Florida, Arkansas and Missouri, were settled 
at first by emigrants from adjacent States and have all of 
them, naturally, a considerable Scotch-Irish element in their 
population. 

Texas was conquered by a Scotch-Irishman, General 
Sam Houston,^ and has many fjimilies of Scotch-Irish 
ancestry within its borders. There are many representa- 
tives of this race in other States, such as Ohio, Iowa, Min- 
nesota and California. The race has been prolific and, 
being of a hardy, brave and adventurous spirit, has gone 
everywhere throughout the country. 

The story of Cherry Valley, a little town in New York 
that was settled by Scotch-Irishmen in 1741, is very 
interesting, but I have no time to tell it.^ 

1 Ramsay as quoted by Heury, First Coug. of the Scotcb-Irisb, p. 125. 

2" His" (Houston's) " ancestors on his father's and mother's side are traced 
back to the Highlands of Scotland." They emigrated to the north of Ireland. 
" Here they remained until the siege of Derry, in which they were engaged, 
when they emigrated to Pennsylvania."— D. C. Kelley in Scotch-Irish in 
America, Second Congress, p. 145. 

3 From this town came the ancestois of the kite Douglas Campbell, a 
descendant of one of the defenders of Londonderry, Ireland, whose recently 



21 

The Scotch-Irish settlers who came to this country 
repaired, for the most part, to the frontiers of the colonies. 
This is true of those who went to the Middle and South 
Atlantic States, where they were found mainly in their 
western portions. It was true, also, of such as came to 
Maine, to Londonderry, New Hampshire, and to Worces- 
ter, Massachusetts. The result was that it was in very 
large measure people of this nationality who were engaged 
in the Indian struggles which preceded the Revolution. 

We find men of this race actively engaged in the Old 
French war, which began in 1744, and in the later contest 
between Great Britain and France on this continent, upon 
the renewal of hostilities in 1756. Thus, soldiers from 
Londonderry served under Pepperell in the expedition 
against Cape Breton. During the later attempt upon 
Crown Point, three companies of hardy men, who had 
adroitness in traversing woods, were selected from the 
New Hampshire regiment to act as rangers. Many of the 
men selected were from the Scotch-Irish town of London- 
derry, and the three captains, Robert Rogers, John Stark, 
and William Stark, had all been residents of the same 
place. The two latter were brothers and sons of an early 
Scotch-Irish inhabitant of the town.^ Rogers, a brave and 
skilful officer, was soon made Major, and his body of 
rangers performed active and efficient service. A com- 
pany of soldiers from Londonderry aided in the reduction 
of Canada in the campaign when Quebec was taken by 
Wolfe. 

In the Colonial wars which preceded the Revolution, it is 
stated that the soldiers of Virginia were principally drawn 

published work. The Puritan in England, Holland and America, has attracted 
considerable attention. The last chapter of his volumes is an interesting 
summary of much that has become known about the Scotch-Irish in the 
United States.— See Campbell, Vol. II., p. 482, note. American Ancestry. 
(J. Munsell's Sons.) Vol. 8, 1893, p. 156. 

1 Parker (p. 239) says that Archibald Stark, the father of William and John 
Stark, was, like many of the earlj* emigrants to Londonderry, N. H., " a 
native of Scotland, and emigrated while young to Londonderry in Ireland." 



22 » 

from the Scotch-Irish settlements in the valley west of the 
Blue Ridge and in the Piedmont Counties. Previous to 
the encounter at Lexington, three British soldiers deserted 
from the army in Boston and found their way to London- 
derr3\ Their hiding place was disclosed and a detachment 
of soldiers was sent from Boston to arrest them. They 
were taken prisoners, but had not gone far before a com- 
pany of young men, which had been hurriedly raised in 
Londonderry, by Captain James Aiken, caught up with 
their captors and demanded and secured their release. 
The rescued men afterwards lived unmolested in London- 
derry.' As soon as the news of the battle of Lexington 
reached New Hampshire, 1200 troops immediately repaired 
to Cambridge and Charlestown. Among these was a large 
company from Londonderry, commanded by George Reed, 
who upon the organization of the troops at Cambridge was 
made a Colonel. The New Hampshire Convention held at 
Exeter, April 25, 1775, formed the troops of that State 
then near Boston, into two regiments under the command 
of Colonels Reed and Stark, natives of Londonderry. 

At the tirstcall of Congress for soldiers to defend Boston, 
Daniel Morgan, of Scotch-Irish blood,^ immediately raised 
a company of riflemen among his people in the lower 
valley of Virginia, and by a forced march of six hundred 
miles reached the beleaguered town in three weeks. 

The back or upper counties of Virginia were Scotch- 
Irish. Their representatives got control of the House of 
Burgesses, and it was by their votes, and under the leader- 
ship of the young Scotchman,^ Patrick Henry, that were 
passed, in opposition to the combined efforts of the old 



1 Parker, p. 104. 

- W. W. Henry, in Scotch-Irish in America, First Cong., p. 118. - 
3 William Wirt Henry writes in the article " Henry, Patrick," in Appleton's 
Cyclopiedia of American Biography, of Patrick Henry: "His father, John 
Henry, was a Scotchman, son of Alexander Henry and Jean Robertson, a 
cousin of the historian William Robertson and of the mother of Lord 
Brougham." 



t 23 

leaders of the province, those resolutions denying the 
validity of the Stamp Act, which roused the continent.^ 

While it cannot be allowed that the Scotch-Irish people 
of Mecklenburg county. North Carolina, passed resolu- 
tions May 20, 1775, declaring their independence of Great 
Britain, it is certain that on the 31st of that month they 
uttered patriotic sentiments fully abreast of the time.^ 

The men of this race showed these sentiments every- 
where throughout the Colonies. Four months before the 
passage of the resolutions in Mecklenburg County, the 
freeholders of Fincastle County, Virginia, presented an 
address to the Continental Congress in which they declared, 
that if an attempt were made to dragoon them out of the 
privileges to which they were entitled as subjects of Great 
Britain and to reduce them to slavery, they were "delib- 
erately and resolutely determined never to surrender 
them to any power on earth but at the expense of" their 
"lives." 3 

It was seventeen days before the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence that eighty-three able-bodied men of the Scotch- 
Irish town of Peterborough, N. H., signed this resolution: 

" We, the subscribers, do hereby solemnly engage and 
promise, that we will, to the utmost of our power, at the 
risk of our lives and fortune, with arms, oppose the hostile 
proceedings of the British fleets and armies against the 
united Colonies."'^ 

It has been suggested that even after the Declaration of 
Independence had been adopted by Congress, it would not 
have been signed and promulgated but for the action of 
John Witherspoon, one of the delegates from New Jersey, 
the President of Princeton College, a Scotch Presbyterian 



1 Henry in First Scotch-Irish Cong., p. 118. 

2 Narrative and Critical History of America, Ed. by .Justin Winsor, v. C, 
pp. 256, 257, note. 

y Professor Henry Alexander White, in Scotch-Irish in America, Second 
Cong., p. 232. 
4 Parker, p. 18G. 



24 

clergyman and a descendant of John Knox. Seeing how 
the other representatives held bacli, he rose in his place, you 
remember, and declaring that as his gray head must soon 
bow to the fate of all, he preferred that it should go by the 
axe of the executioner rather than that the cause of inde- 
pendence should not prevail.^ 

Several Scotchmen and Scotch-Irishmen signed the 
Declaration. Professor Macloskie, a Scotch-Irish professor 
in Princeton College, states that the " Declaration of Inde- 
pendence as we have it to-day is in the handwriting of a 
Scotch-Irishman, Charles Thomson, the Secretary of Con- 
gress ; was first printed by Captain Thomas Dunlap, another 
Scotch-Irishman, who published the first daily newspaper 
in America ; a third Scotch-Irishman, Captain John Nixon, 
of Philadelphia, first read it to the people."^ 

The Scotch-Irish came to this country full of bitter feel- 
ing towards the government of Great Britain. They had 
been oppressed by that government and they believed that 
it had wickedly broken faith with them. They hated, too, 
the hierarchy of the Church of England. Presbyterians 
as they were, they had been oppressed by that hierarchy. 
They sympathized, also, with the Puritans of New Eng- 
land, who regarded the presence here of bishops and other 
ecclesiastics of the Church of England as the presence of 
the emissaries of a foreign power that was trying to reduce 
them to subjection. 

It was largely through Scotch-Irish influence and support 
that religious liberty was established in Virginia and else- 
where throughout this country. These showed themselves 
when, in 1776, Patrick Henry, a Scotchman, as before 



iThis anecdote appears in a number of places. (See, e.g., Craigbead's 
Scotcb and Irisb Seeds, etc., p. 334.) Tt may be found witb the particular turn 
given to it bere in Tbe Scotcb-Irisb in America, First Cong., pp. 182, 183, in 
an address by Colonel A. K. M'Clure, of rhiladelpbia. 

2 Professor George Macloskie, Princeton College, to wbom Campbell declares 
bira«elf indebted for the information given. See Campbell, Vol. II., p. 487 
(note). See, also. The Scotch-Irish iu America, First Congress, p. 95. 



25 

stated, led in the movement which secured the insertion in 
the famous Bill of Rights of Virginia of the declaration 
that one of the inalienable rights of man is his right to 
worship God according to the dictates of his conscience. 

It was through the pressure of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians 
that Jefferson, in the next session of the assembly, was 
prompted to write, and by their votes that he secured the 
passage of, the act for the establishment of religious liberty, 
which has done so much to effect the divorce of Church 
and State in Virginia and throughout the Union. 

In contemplating the wide-reaching results of the exam- 
ple set here in America, Mr. William Wirt Henry is led to 
add to a statement similar to the one just made, "Thus 
there was completed by the Scotch-Irish in Virginia, in 
1776, the Reformation commenced by Luther two hundred 
and fifty years before." ^ 

The Scotch-Irish, as you would imply from what I have 
said before, entered into the contest of the Revolution, not V 
only to uphold civil and religious liberty, but also with a 
zeal inspired by an ardent desire to pay off old scores.^ The 
Scotch-Irish served in great numbers in the Continental 
array and in the militia of the several States during the 
Revolution, and the achievements of their officers and 
men were often brilliant. When the British landed at 
Charlestown "the two New Hampshire regiments were 
ordered to join the forces on Breed's Hill. A part were 
detached to throw up a work on Bunker Hill, and the 
remainder under" the Colonels born in Londonderry, 
" Stark and Reed, joined the Connecticut forces under 
General Putnam, and the regiment of Colonel Prescott, at 



1 Scotch-Irish iu America, First Cong., p. 123. 

2 Froude says : " But throughout the revolted colonies, and, therefore, prob- 
ably in the first to bei^in the struggle, all evidence shows that the foremost, the 
most irreconcilable, the most determined in pushing the quarrel to the last ex- 
tremity, were the Scotch-Irish whom the bishops and Lord Donegal and Com- 
pany had been pleased to drive out of Ulster." -The English in Ireland iu the 
18th Century, by J. A. Froude, Vol. II., p. 141 (English ed.). 



26 

the rail-fence. 'This was the very point of the British 
attack, the key of the American position.'"^ 

Again, it was John Stark who hurriedly gathered together 
1,400 well-trained militia from New Hampshire and Ver- 
mont, and instead of making Molly Stark a widow, beat the 
detachment of troops which Burgoyne had sent to Benning- 
ton, giving the Americans the much needed inspiration of 
a victory. In less than two months followed the battle of 
Saratoga, October 7, 1777. Burgoyne was conducting an 
armed reconnoissance and much fighting ensued. The right 
of the British line was commanded by the brave Scotchman, 
General Simon Fraser. On the left of the American 
troops was the equally brave Scotch-Irish Colonel Morgan, 
with his regiment of sharpshooters. The Scotch-Irish in 
America were generally tine marksmen.^ Seeing that an 
officer on an iron gray charger was active in the fight and 
that wherever he went he turned the tide of battle, 
Morgan, calling to some of the best men in his regiment, 
pointed to the officer and said, "Bring him down." At the 
crack of a faithful rifle the gallant British officer reeled in 
his saddle and fell. That officer was Simon Fraser, the 
idol of Burgoyne's army.^ Burgoyne was now in straits, 
and fiiiling to receive hoped-for aid from Sir Henry 
Clinton, surrendered his army on the 17th of the month. 

A distinguished member of this Society^ has labored hard, 
during the last few years, in forcible and eloquent speech, 
to secure for the pioneer settler of the Northwestern Terri- 
tory, General Rufus Putman, of Rutland, Massachusetts, 



1 Parker, p. 106. 

2 Parker quotes from an uunamed writer the following w^ords as written 
about the troops under Colonels Stark and Reed at Bunker Hill : " Almost 
every soldier equalled William Tell as a marksman, and could aim his weapon 
at au opposer with as keen a relish. Those from the frontiers had gained this 
address against the savages and beasts of the forests."— Parker's History of 
Londonderry, p. 106. 

3 William Wirt Henry in First Scotch-Irish Congress, p. 119. Lossing's Pic- 
torial Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. I., p. 62. 

4 Hon. George F. Hoar. 



27 

due recognition of what he regards as his great merits as an 
officer in the Revolutionary army, and his inestimable ser- 
vices in giving a proper tone to the settlements in the north- 
west. It is interesting to mention in connection with this 
fact another fact, namely, that the Northwestern Territory, 
then claimed by Virginia, was taken possession of in 1778, 
in an ever memorable campaign, by the great soldier, 
Colonel George Rogers Clark, of Scotch descent,^ and 
two hundred brave men of the Scotch-Irish race whom 
he had collected for his secret expedition, in Augusta 
County, Virginia, and in Kentucky, at the command of 
the Scotch governor, Patrick Henry. 

It would be a pleasant task to speak at length of the 
exploits, during the Revolution, of officers and men from 
the Middle and Southern States, of Scotch-Irish extraction, 
for a majority of the troops who served on the American 
side, from Pennsylvania and the States south of it, seem 
to have been of that nationality. I can only mention, 
however, the battle of King's Mountain, which was fought 
by a body of troops composed of Huguenots and of Scotch- 
Irish volunteers. This battle took place the 7th of October, 
1780, just three years after the memorable engagement at 
Saratoga, and, like the earlier contest, was a turning point 
in the affairs of the Americans. That battle was the fore- 
runner of the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, and 
stood in causal relations to it, just as the battle of Saratoga 
resulted in the capture of the army of Burgoyne. 

1 Mr. Reuben G. Thwaites, Secretary of The State Historical Society of Wis- 
consin, writes to the author of this paper, as follows : — 

" Accordinj^ to all family traditions, John Clark, great-grandfather of George 
Rogers Clark, came to Virginia in 1630, from the southwest part of Scotland. 
According to one tradition, a few years later, he visited friends in Maryland, 
and married there 'a red-haired Scotchwoman.' George Rogers Clark him- 
self , had 'sandy' hair; another tradition lias it, that the woman was a Daue. 
Their one son, William John, died early, leaving two sons, John('-) and Jona- 
than. Jonathan was a bachelor, and left his estate to his brother's son, John(3). 
One of William John's daughters married a Scotch settler, McCloud, and their 
daughter married Jobu Rogers, father of the Ann Rogers who married John 
Clark (^), her cousin, and thus she became the mother of George Rogers Clark. 
So George Rogers Clark had Scotch ancestry on both sides of the house." 



28 

Besides the officers already mentioned, the Scotch-Irish 
contributed to the Continental army during the Revolution 
such men as General Henry Knox of Massachusetts/ 
General George Clinton of New york,^ and, as claimed on 
apparently good grounds, Colonel John Eager Howard of 
Maryland, who changed the fortunes of the day at the battle 
of Cowpens, Colonel William Campbell of Virginia, who 
won the battle of King's Mountain, and General Andrew 
Pickens of South Carolina.^ 

" After the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, 
the various States proceeded to form their independent 
governments. Then the Scotch-Irish gave to New York 
her first governor, George Clinton, who filled the position 
for seven terms, of three years each, and died during his 
second term of office as Vice-President of the United 



1 See Life and Correspoudeuce of Henry Knox, etc., by Francis S. Drake, 
Boston, 1873, pp. 8, 9. 

2 American Ancestry, Vol. VI., 1891, p. 52. 

3 General Anthony Wayne, the brave hero of Stony Point, is commonly 
spoken of as a Scotch-Irishman. His father was born in "Wicklow County, 
Ireland. There was a tradition in the family that the Waynes were of Welsh 
origin. They may have intermarried with persons of Scotch blood, however. 
(See American Ancestry, Vol. IV., p. 75.) General John Sullivan of Maine 
and New Hampshire, older brother of Governor James Sullivan of Massachu- 
setts, is sometimes claimed as a Scotch-Irishman. He certainlj' was Irish, but 
I do not find that he was Scotch also. In Craighead's Scotch and Irish Seeds 
in American Soil, Rev. Dr. Smith is quoted as saying that General Morgan, the 
hero of Cowpens, and General Pickens, who made the arrangements for that 
battle, were "both Presbyterian elders," and that "nearly all under their 
command were Presbyterians." (p. 342.) Dr. Smith is also quoted as saying, 
that" in the battle of King's Mountain, Colonel Campbell" and several other 
high officers were Presbyterian elders, and that " the body of their troops 
were collected from Presbyterian settlements." (p. 342.) General Wayne is 
mentioned as a Presbyterian, (p. 340.) Of course there were many Presby- 
terians not of Scotch or Scotch-Irish blood, but men of those races who 
emigrated to America and their families were for the most part of that 
denomination. The picturesque Kentuckian, Daniel Boone, is often spoken of 
as a Scotch-Irishman. It is well known that the late Lyman C. Draper had un- 
usual facilities for finding out the truth in regard to the Boones. Mr. Reuben 
G. Thwaites writes me from Madison, Wisconsin, as follows : " Daniel Boone's 
father was of pure English stock, from Devonshire; his mother, Sarah 
Morgan, was a Welsh Quaker. Draper's notes clearly indicate that he dis- 
carded the Scotch-Irish theory regarding Sarah." 



29 

States. To Delaware they gave her first governor, John 
MacKinney. To Pennsylvania they gave her war governor, 
Thomas McKean, one of the signers of the Declaration of 
Independence. To New Jersey Scotland gave her war 
governor, William Livingston, and to Virginia, Patrick 
Henry, not only her great war governor" but her civil 
leader.^ 

"It is a noteworthy fact in American history," writes 
Douglas Campbell, "that of the four members of Wash- 
ington's cabinet, Knox, of Massachusetts, the only New 
Englander, was a Scotch-Irishman ; Alexander Hamilton 
of New York was a Scotch-Frenchman ; Thomas Jefferson 
was of Welsh descent; and the fourth, Edmund Eandolph, 
claimed among his ancestors the Scotch Earls of Murray. 
New York also furnished the first Chief Justice of the United 
States, John Jay, who was a descendant of French Hugue- 
nots ; while the second Chief Justice, John Rutledge, was 
Scotch-Irish, as were also Wilson and Iredell, two of the 
four original associate justices ; a third, Blair, being of 
Scotch origin. John Marshall, the great Chief Justice, 
was, like Jefferson, of Welsh descent." ^ 

After the formation of the United States ijovernment we 
find men of the Scotch-Irish race winning honors in war as 
they had done in the Revolution, and in the earlier contests 
between France and Great Britain, and with the North 
American Indians. 

At first, the United States had only a nominal army. In 
the spring of 1792 the number of troops was increased to 
5,000, a legionary organization was adopted, and Anthony 
Wayne was appointed Major-General. With this army 
General Wayne took the field against the Miami Indians, 
and overthrew them at the battle of Maumee Rapids on 
August 20, 1794. 

You all remember the stirring picture of the Battle of 



1 Campbell, Vol. II., p. 4S7. 
^Ibid.,i>. 481, note. 



30 

Lake Erie in the Capitol at Washington. Commodore 
Oliver Hazard Perry, taking his younger brother Alexander 
with him and calling to four sailors to row him to the 
Niagara, is represented, with the flag of his vessel wrapped 
around his arm, as he passed from the disabled Laivrence in 
a small boat to the ship next in size to the ruined flag-ship. 
Going out from Put-in-Bay the 10th of September, 1813, 
with his whole squadron, he met the British fleet in a mem- 
orable naval contest. Himself a young man of twenty- 
eight years of age he was opposed to one of Nelson's 
veterans. Himself a Scotch-Irishman, his opponent, Cap- 
tain Robert H. Barclay, was a Scotchman. The engage- 
ment was hot, but at three o'clock in the afternoon the gal- 
lant Perry saw the British flag hauled down. For the first 
time since she had created a navy. Great Britain lost an 
entire squadron. " We have met the enemy and they are 
ours," is the familiar line in which Perry announced his 
victory, in a despatch to General William Henry Harrison. 
Commodore Perry's mother was Sarah Wallace Alexander, 
a Scotch woman from the north of Ireland.^ She l)ecame 
the mother of five sons, all of whom were officers in the 
United States Navy. Two daughters married Captain 
George W. Rogers and Dr. William Butler of the U. S. 
Navy. Dr. Butler was the father of Senator Matthew Cal- 
braith Butler, of South Carol int^ After the victory at 
Lake Erie, some farmers in Rhode Island, you remember, 
declared, such was the estimation in which they held this 
woman, that it was " Mrs. Perry's victory."'"^ 

The furious battle at the Horse Shoe of the Tallapoosa 



1 Christopher Raymond Perry, the father of Oliver Hazard Perry, met his 
future wife when contiued as a prisoner of war atNewry, Ireland. She was a 
granddaughter of "James Wallace, an officer in the Scotch army and a signer 
of the Solemn League and Covenant" who " fled in 16G0 with others, from 
County Ayr to the north of Ireland."— Our Naval Heroes, by D. C. Kelley, in 
The Scotch-Irish in America, Fifth Congress, p. 115. See, also, *' Ancestry of 
thirty-three Rhode Islanders," &c., by John Osborne Austin, under Perry. 

•2 Our Naval Heroes, by D. C. Kelley, in Fifth Scotch-Irish Congress, pp. 114- 
116. See Lossiug's Pictorial Field Book of the War of 1812, Ch. 25. 



31 • 

River with the Creek Indians, March 27, 1814, brought to 
the front General Sara Houston, a man of the Scotch-Irish 
race of whom the country has heard much. Major-General 
Andrew Jackson, another distinguished Scotch-Irishman,^ 
commanded in that battle. Jackson's father, also named 
Andrew, came from Carrickfergus, on the north coast of 
Ireland, in 1765. This battle, was a signal victory, and 
soon after a treaty of peace was signed by which the hostile 
Creeks lost the greater part of their territory. It is 
unnecessary to speak of General Jackson's success at New 
Orleans in January of the following year. 

It must be stated, however, that General James Miller, 
who won universal admiration by his gallant attack upon a 
batter}^ at Luncly's Lane, July 25, 1814, was Scotch-Irish, 
a native of Peterborough and out of the loins of London- 
derry.^ It is he who was subsequently Collector of Cus- 
toms at Salem for more than twenty years, and of whom 
Hawthorne speaks so enthusiastically, calling him "New 
England's most distinguished soldier."-^ 

Zachary Taylor, the popular hero of the Mexican war, is 
generally reckoned as having been of Scotch-Irish extrac- 
tion ; of that race, too, of course, was Matthew Calbraith 
Perry, the brother of the victor of the battle of Lake Erie, 
who ably assisted Scott as a naval commander at Vera 



1 Amoug other places see Andrew Jackson, by D. C. Kelley, in Scotch-Irish 
in America, Third Congress, p. 182. Andrew Jackson as a Pubh'c Man, by 
William Graham Sumner (American Statesmen Series), Boston: 1SS2. James 
Parton in his life of Andrew Jackson says (pp. 47 and 48, vol. 1) : "I may as 
well remark here as anywhere, that the features and shape of head of General 
Jackson, which ten thousand sign-boards have made familiar to the people of 
the United States, are common in North Carolina and Tennessee. In the 
course of a two mouths' tour in those States among the people of Scotch-Irish 
descent, I saw more than twenty well-marked specimens of the long, slender 
Jacksouian head, with the bushy, bristling hair, and the well known features." 

2 See in History of the town of Peterborough, N. II., by Albert Smith, 
V Genealogy and history of Pctei-borough families," p. 147. In the sketch of 

General Miller in Smith's history is a letter to his wife liuth, written from Fort 
Erie, July 2S, 1814, three days after the battle of Luudy's Lane. 

3 *' The Custom House," introductory to the Scarlet Letter. 



32 

Cruz, and who afterwards organized and conducted with 
marked success the well known expedition to Japan. 

OiEcers and men of the Scotch-Irish race served in large 
numbers on both sides in the late Civil War, but I cannot 
stop to mention even the names of the most distinguished. 

Mr. Campbell says " of the twenty-three Presidents of 
the United States, the Scotch-Irish have contributed six — 
Jackson, Polk, Taylor, Buchanan, Johnson, Arthur; the 
Scotch three — Monroe, Grant, Hayes ; the Welsh one — 
Jefferson ; and the Hollanders one — Van Buren. Garfield's 
ancestors on his father's side came from England, but the 
family line is traced back into Wales ; his mother was a 
French Huguenot. Cleveland's mother was Irish ; Benja- 
min Harrison's mother was Scotch."^ "The pedigrees of 
Madison and Lincoln are doubtful."^ 

Six of the early settlers of the Scotch-Irish town of 
Londonderry, or their descendants, writes Parker, "have 
filled the gubernatorial chair of New Hampshire, namely, 
Matthew Thornton, who was President of the Provincial 
Congress, in 1775, Jeremiah Smith, Samuel Bell, John 
Bell, Samuel Dinsmore, and Samuel Dinsmore, Jr."^ 

To these names must be added at least one more, namely, 
that of our late associate, Governor and United States Sen- 
ator, Charles Henry Bell, of Exeter, who was the third 
chief magistrate of New Hampshire, bearing the surname of 
the ancestor of the three, John Bell of Londonderry, N. H. 
Our late associate John James Bell, grandson of Governor 
Samuel Bell and son of Judge Samuel D. Bell, and Hon. 
Luther V. Bell, formerly Superintendent of the McLean 
Asylum, Somerville, Massachusetts, were also descendants 
of John Bell of Londonderry. 

1 Campbell, Vol. 2, p. 493. note. 

- Ibid. The writer of this paper has not studied the pedigrees of the presi- 
dents, but f^ives the statement made regarding the above as that of an in\ esti- 
gator who, while not by any means free from mistakes, is pretty careful in re- 
spect to assertions. The same remark should be made regarding some of the 
other pedigrees contained in other extracts from Mr. Campbell's History. 

3 Parker, p. 208. 



33 

The Kev. Dr. Joseph MacKean, first President of Bow- 
doin College, was a native of Londonderry.^ 

The venerable Rev. Dr. John H. Morison, of Boston, is 
of Scotch-Irish extraction and is descended from the father 
of the first male child born in Londonderry. It is of him 
that the story is told that after he had delivered an election 
sermon before the New Hampshire legislature, and it had 
been moved to print a certain number of copies of the dis- 
course, a member rose and said that he would move that 
additional copies be printed if the brogue of the preacher 
could be reproduced. 

Horace Greeley, according to Whitelaw Reid, was of 
Scotch-Irish ancestry on both sides of his house.- 

John Caldwell Calhoun, the great Southern statesman, 
like his sturdy opponent, President Jackson, was of the 
Scotch-Irish race,*' so were the great inventors, Robert 
Fulton,"* Cyrus H. McCormick,^ and Samuel Finley Breese 



1 His father, Jolm MacKean, was born April 13, 1715, at Biill3'mone_v, in the 
County of Antrim, Ireland, and was about four years of age when his father 
emigrated to this country.— Parker, p. 224. 

'^^ee "Greeley, Horace," written by Whitelaw Eeid, in Appleton's Cyclo- 
paedia of American Biography. 

3 John C. Calhoun was the grandson of James Calhoun, who is said to have 
emigrated from Donegal, Ireland, in 1733 (John C. Calhoun, by Dr. H. von Hoist, 
p. S.) John C. Calhoun was the son of Patrick Calhoun, whom James Parton, 
in his Famous Americans of Recent Times speaks of (pp. 117, llS) as a Scotch- 
Irishman, who, with Andrew Jackson and Andrew Johnson, other Scotch- 
Irishmen, ilhistrates well the " North of Ireland " character. Patrick Calhoun 
was a Presbyterian like his father (J. Randolph Tucker, in article '"Calhoun, 
John Caldwell " in Appleton's Cyclop;edia of American Biography). In 1770, 
Patrick Calhoun (von Hoist, p. 8,) married Martha Caldwell, who, says John 
S. Jenkins in his Life of John Caldwell Calhoun (p. 21), was a daughter of a 
Scotch-Irish Presbyterian, who, according to Tucker, was an emigrant from 
Ireland. 

* " Robert Fulton was born in Little Britain, Lancaster Co., Pa., 17G5. He 
was of respectable though not wealthy family. His father and mother were 
of Scotch-Irish blood. Their families were supposed to be a part of the great 
emigration from Ireland in 1730-31. The Fulton family were probably among 
the early settlers of the town of Lancaster, as the father of Robert Fulton 
was one of the founders of the Presbyterian Church of that place."— The 
Inventors of the Scotch-Irish race, by J. H. Bryson, in The Scotch-Irish in 
America, Fourth Congress, p. 175. 

5 Scotch-Irish in America, First Congress, p. 101, Fourth Congress, p. 185. 
3 



34 

Morse. The last named was the son of our late associate 
Rev. Jedidiah Morse, and the great-grandson of Rev. Dr. 
Samuel Finley, a Scotch-Irish President of Princeton^ 
College. The celebrated surgeon, Dr. D. Hayes Agnew, 
was Scotch-Irish on both sides of his family. ^ Joseph 
Henry was of Scotch descent.^ Alexander Graham Bell, 
the inventor of the telephone, is a native of Scotland."* 
In Canada the distinguished statesman Robert Baldwin 
and a large portion of his associates in securing the estab- 
lishment of the Dominion of Canada are stated to have 
been of Scotch-Irish blood. ^ 

The versatile Sir Francis Hincks is said to have been of 
the same blood. ^ 

It is interesting to know that our associate James Bryce, 
the sympathetic and painstaking writer of the American 
Commonwealth, is a grandson of a Presbyterian minister 
of the north of Ireland and a Scotch-Irishman.' 



1 The Scotch-Irish in America, Fourth Congress, p. 178. 

2 Dr. D. Hayes Agnew, by Dr. J. Howe Adams, Fifth Scotch-Irish Congress, 
p. 202. 

3 " Both the father and mother of Joseph Henry came from the southwest 
of Scotland, where the old family name was Hendrie. * * * the traditions 
of the family on both sides and the lion on the coat of arms point back to Irish 
ancestry of the highest rank; * * * he had a Scotch-Irish wife."— Pro- 
fessor G. Macloskie in " Joseph Henry " in The Scotch-Irish in America, 
Fifth Congress, p. 100. 

•iThe mother of Tliomas A. Edison, who was Miss Elliott, is of Scotch-Irish 
blood, says Dr. Bryson. — The Scotch-Irish in America, Fourth Congress, 
p. 188. 

5 The Scotch-Irish in Canada by Stuart Acheson, in The Scotch-Irish in 
America, Third Congress, pp. 203 and 204. Dr. William Warren Baldwin, the 
father of Robert Baldwin, took the degree of M.D. at Edinburgh. He came to 
this country from a place near Cork, Ireland. Robert Baldwin was born in 
Toronto in ISOi.— Cyclopiedia of Canadian Biography by George McLean Rose. 

6 The Scotch-Irish in Canada by S. Aclieson, just referred to, p. 206. Sir 
Francis Hincks was born in ^ork, Ireland, son of Thomas Dix Hincks, a 
Presbyterian minister. The latter was born in Dublin and married Anne 
Boult of Chester. He was a son of Edward Hincks (m. Dix) who moved 
from Chester.— See Dictionary of National Biography, Appleton's Cycloptcdia 
of American Biography and Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography just mentioned. 

"Rev. James Bryce (1767-1857) went from Scotland, where he was born, 
to Ireland, and settled in 1805, as minister of the anti-burgher church in 
Killaig, Co. Londonderry. His son, James Bryce (1800-1877), was born in 



35 

The Scotch-Irish emigrants to this country were, gen- 
erally speaking, men of splendid bodies and perfect diges- 
tion. They were men, too, of marked mental characteristics, 
which have impressed themselves on their posterity. They 
were plain, industrious and frugal in their lives. It has 
been said, such was their thrift, that Poor Richard himself 
could have ffiven" them " no new lessons against wasteful- 
ness and prodigality."^ 

But they had good intellectual powers and strong wills. 
They were notable for practical sagacity and common sense, 
and for tenacity of purpose. Conscious of their merits 
they were self-reliant and always ready to assert themselves, 
to defend their own rights and those of their neighbors, 
and courageously push forward. Plain in speech, they 
were not infrequently frank to the point of rudeness. With 
energy and firmness, while often hard, they were affec- 
tionate towards persons who conciliated them, hospitable 
and faithful. Their sedateness was qualified by their wit 
and humor. 

The Scotch-Irish were led to come to this country, not 
only by the desire to better their material condition and to 
escape persecution, but by a spirit of daring. 

As we have seen they took up their abode on our 
frontiers and defended us from the depredations of Indians, 
and did a large portion of the fighting required in our wars. 
They were ardent promoters of civil and religious liberty'. 
As was to be expected, these Scotch Calvinists breathed 
the spirit of John Knox and contended fervently that the 
final regulation of political action belongs to the people. 

For many years, also, they had been fighting for religious 



Killai;; (neai- Coleraine), In 1S4G, appointed to the Hinh School, Glasgow. 
See Dictionary of National Biography, to which the information contained in 
the article on the Bryces was furnished by the family. James Bryce, the 
writer of the American Commonwealth, the son and grandson of the persons 
just mentioned, was born in Belfast, Ireland, May 10th, 1838. His mother was 
(or is) Margaret, eldest daughter of James Young, Esquire, of Abbey ville, Co. 
Antrim.— See Men and Women of the Time, Thirteenth edition, 1891. 
1 Governor Bell in " Londonderry Celebration," etc., pp. 23, 24. 



36 

liberty in Scotland and Ireland, and, taught by ecclesiasti- 
cal and governmental oppression, had become the warmest 
adherents of reb'gious liberty. The Scotch-Irish were a 
devout and religious people, and constant and earnest Bible 
readers. In many a home in this land they reproduced 
the beautiful picture of domestic piety which has been 
painted by the genius of the immortal Scottish poet. 
Burns, in the Cotter's Saturday Night. 

The Scotch-Irish, however, were never content with a 
sentimental piety, but sought always with tremendous 
earnestness, to place religion on a basis of knowledge and 
thought. They were men, too, of high moral principle 
and marked integrity. Another characteristic which never 
failed to appear among settlements of this people, was a 
mighty zeal for education. They were never content with 
the lower grades of common schools, but demanded, every- 
where, classical high schools, and later, colleges and uni- 
versities. Look at the schools which they established in 
Londonderry^ and other New Hampshire towns. In the 
little town of Cherry Valley, in New York, they opened 
the first classical school in the central and western portions 
of that great State. ^ They seem to have furnished the 
principal schoolmasters of all the provinces south of New 
York, prior to the Eevolution, and it is noteworthy that a 
large portion of the leaders in that great movement in the 
lower Middle, and Southern States, received their educa- 
tion under men of this race.^ From them they undoubt- 
edly caught an ardent love of liberty and an increased glow 
of patriotism. 

Eeligion, virtue, and knowledge were three passions of 
the Scotch-Irish. With them piety was never divorced 



1 Parker, pp. 82, 83,119 et seq., 128.— Bell in "Londonderry Celebration," 
etc., p. 32. 

2 76("rf.,pp. 105, lt»6. 

3 What the Scotch-Irish liave done for Education, by G. Macloskie, in 
Scotch-Irish in America, First Congress, pp. 90-101.— Campbell, Vol. II., p. 
486, with the references to authorities cited. 



37 

from education, and religion, as stated before, was based 
upon an intellectual foundation and what they believed to 
be a basis of knowledge. 

I began this paper by saying that the Puritan owed a 
tribute to the Scotch-Irishman. There is much in common 
between them, but I have not time to dwell upon the 
resemblances in their characters and careers. They agreed 
in their views of religious truth and duty, and in their 
zeal and firmness in resisting civil and ecclesiastical domi- 
nation. They were fellow sufferers for conscience' sake. 

It has been claimed, and here I conclude, that the Scotch- 
Irish in this country while eager to enjoy religious liberty 
for themselves, have been ready to grant it to others, and 
that in this respect they showed a better spirit than the 
Puritans. 

Was not the difference caused by time, however? 

The Scotch-Irish came here a hundred years later than 
the Puritans. Meanwhile the religious world had ffone 
ahead and generally exercised a larger toleration. 



&^ 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. 



The Scotch-Irish in America. Proceedings of the Scotch-Irish Congress, at 
Columbia, Tenn., May 8-11, 1889. Cincinnati : Robert Clark & Co., 1889. 

— Proceedings and Addresses of the Second Congress, at Pittsburg, Pa., 
May 29 to June 1, 1890. Cincinnati : Robert Clarke & Co., 1890. 

— Proceedings and Addresses of the Third Congress, at Louisville, Ky., May 
14 to 17, 1891. Nashville, Tenn. : Publishing House of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church Southj Barber & Smith, Agents. 

— Proceedings and Addresses of the Fourth Congress, at Atlanta, Ga., 
April 28 to May 1, 1892. Nashville, Tenn. : Publishing House of the Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church South, Barber & Smith, Agents. 

— Proceedings and Addresses of the Fifth Congress, at Springfield, Ohio, 
May 11 to 14, 1893. Nashville, Tenn. : Barber & Smith, Agents. 

— Proce'edings and Addresses of the Sixth Congress, at Des Moines, Iowa, 
June 7 to 10, 1894. Nashville, Tenn. : Barber & Smith, Agents. 

These volumes of proceedings contain many papers of great value, and 
relate to the history of tbe Scotch-Irish race before coming to America 
and in this country. 

In preparing the Report of the Council, I have made especial use of 
" 'i he Scotch-Irish of the South," a paper in the first volume, by William 
Wirt Henry, and considerable use of "The Making of the Ulsterman," 
by J. S. Macintosh; "The Scotch-Irish of New England," by Arthur L. 
Perry, in the second volume; " The Scotch-Irish in Canada," by Stuart 
Acheson, in the third; "The Inventors of the Scotch-Irish race," by 
John H. Bryson, in the fourth; and "Our Naval Heroes," by D. C. 
Kelly, in the fifth volume. 

Professor Arthur L. Perry's paper, read at the Second Congress, has 

been printed in pamphlet form. (Boston : printed by J. S. Cushing & Co.) 

As printed in the proceedings, portions of this paper were cut out and 

their places indicated by stars. These are given at length in the reprint. 

/ Campbell, Douglas. " The Puritan in Holland, England and America." 2 v. 

New York : Harper & Brothers, 1892. 

The matter regarding the Scotch-Irish is to be found in the last chapter 
of the second volume. That chapter, besides embodying much other 
material, gives a very good summary of a large portion of the informa- 
tion brought out in the first three Congresses of the Scotch-Irish, correct- 
ing in some cases statements made in papers read in those meetings. I 
have been much indebted to Mr. Campbell's chapter, but think that it 
needs careful revision. 
For a history of the Scotch-Irish before coming to America, see — 
Froude, James Anthony. " The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Cent- 
ury." 3 V. London, 1874. 



39 

Lecky, "W. E, H. "A History of England in the Eighteenth Century." 8 v. 

New York, 1878-lSOO. London, 1878-1890. 
Harrison, John. " The Scot in Ulster." Edinburgh and London, 1888. 

The work of Mr. Harrison is a little volume which contains a valuable 
epitome of the history of the Scotch-Irish in Ulster, from the beginning, 
of the Seventeenth Century to the present time. It is founded upon the 
best authorities, which appear to have been carefully consulted. I have 
made free use of Mr, Harrison's statements in preparing the earlier por- 
tions of ray paper. 
The more important works referred to by Mr. Harrison are the following :— 
Calendar of State Papers. Ireland, 1603. 
Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, vol. 8. 
The Montgomery Manuscripts. Belfast, 1869. 
The Hamilton Manuscripts. Belfast, 1867. 
State Papers of James VI. (Abbottsford Club.) 

Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Glasgow, vols. 1630 to 1662. 
Rushworth, John. Historical Collections, 1618 to 1648. 
Eraser's Magazine, for article on Ulster and its people. July-Dec, 1876. 
Reid, James. History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. 
Thomson's Acts of Scottish Parliament. 
Benn, George. History of Belfast. 

Knox, Alexander. History of the County of Down. Dublin, 1875. 
Hill, George. The Macdonuels of Antrim. 
Hill, George. The Plantation in Ulster. 

Gardiner's Fall of the Monarchy of Charles I., chaps. 15 and 16. 
Balfour's Annals of Scotland. 

Memorials of the troubles in Scotland. (Spalding Club.) 
Turner, Sir James. Memoirs of his own life and time. 
Prendergast's Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland. 
Woodrow's History of the Suft'eriugs of the Church of Scotland. 
Petty, Sir William. Political Survey of Ireland. London, 1719. 
Leiand's History of Ireland. 
Macpherson's History of Commerce. 

Macaulay's History of England, Chapter 12 (Defence of Londonderry). 
Walker's True account of the Siege of Londonderry. London, 1689. 
Articles in the Ulster Journal of Archaeology. 
Young, Arthur. A Tour in Ireland, made in the years 1776-'77-'78. 
Other works on this period of Scotch-Irish history which may be examined 
with advantage are — 
Plowden, Francis. Historical Review of the state of Ireland. Phila., 1805-6. 

5v. 8°. 
Futhey, J. Smith. Historical discourse delivered on the 150th anniversary of 
the Octorara church, Chester Co., Pa. 

Long extracts from this address are given in Smith's " History of 
Peterborough," to be found later on in this list. 
In regard to the history of the Scotch-Irish in New England, besides the 
paper of Professor Perry, it is desirable to refer to the following works : — 
Maine.— Willis, William. The Scotch-Irish immigration to Maine, and Pres- 
byterianism in New England (Article I. in Collections of the Maine Histori- 
cal Society, Vol. VI., Portland). 



40 

New Hampshire. — State Papers of New Hampshire,— particularly " Towns," 
Vol. 14, aud " Muster Rolls," Yol. 2. 

— Parker, Edward L. The History of Londonderry, comprising the towns 
of Derry and Londonderry, N. H. Boston: Perkins & Whipple, 1S51. 
I have made large use of the history of Parker and the paper of Willis 
in preparing this paper. 
— Smith, Albert. History of the town of Peterborough, Hillsborough 

County, New Hampshire, etc. Boston : Press of George H. Ellis, 1876. 
— Morrison, Leonard A. The History of Windham, N. H. Boston: Cupples, 

Upham & Co., 1883. 
—Belknap, Jeremy. History of New Hampshire. 

— The Londonderry Celebration, Exercises on the 150th anniversary of the 
settlement of Old Nutlield, June 10, 18G9. Compiled by Robert C. Mack. 
Manchester: Published by John B. Clarke, 1870. 
— Stark, Caleb. Memoir and official correspondence of General J. Stark, etc. 

Concord, 1860. 
— Addresses at the dedication of the monument erected to the memory of 
Matthew Thornton, at Merrimack, N. H., September 29, 1892. Published 
by authority of the State. Concord, N. H. ; The Republican Press Associ- 
ation, 1894. 
Vermont.— Thompson, Zadoc. History of Vermont, national, civil and sta- 
tistical, in three parts. 

Look in the Gazetteer of Vermont, which is part three of this work, 
under such headings as " Londonderi-y," " Landgrove," etc. 
— McKeen's History of Bradford, Vermont. 
Massachusetts. TFb?'ces^e?'.— Records of the Proprietors of Worcester, 
Massachusetts. Edited by Franklin P. Rice. In Collections of the 
Worcester Society of Antiquity, Vol. III. Worcester, Mass. : Published 
by the Society, 1881. 
— Early records of the town of Worcester, 1722-1821. In Collections of the 
Worcester Society of Antiquity, Vols. 2, 4, 8, 10, Part 1 of 11. 

The Worcester Society of Antiquity will continue the publication of 
the records of the town. 
— Deeds at Registry of Deeds. 

Worcester County was formed July 10, 1731. Deeds recorded before 
that date can be consulted at the Registry of Deeds in Middlesex County, 
at Cambridge, as Worcester belonged to Middlesex County before 
Worcester County was formed. 
—The records of births and deaths in Worcester. 

— Worcester births, marriages and deaths. Compiled by Franklin P. Rice. 
Part I— Births. Worcester, Mass.: The Worcester Society of Antiquity, 
1894. In Collections of the Worcester Society of Antiquity, Vol. XII., 
Worcester, Mass. : Published by the Society, 1894. 
—Inscriptions from the old Burial Grounds in Worcester, Massachusetts, 
from 1727 to 1859, with biographical and historical notes. In Collections of 
the Worcester Society of Antiquity, Vol. I. 
— Lincoln, William. History of Worcester. Worcester: Moses D. Phillips 
& Co., 1837. 

with additions by Charles Hersey, 1862. 

— Wall, Caleb A. Reminiscences of Worcester. Worcester, Mass. : 
Printed by Tyler & Seagrave, 1877. 



41 

—Holland, Josiah Gilbert. History of Western Massachusetts, 2 v. Spring- 
field: Published by Samuel Bowles & Co., 1855. 
— Waldo Family. — New England Historical and Genealogical Register, 
XVIII., 17G, 177. 

Bridgman, Thomas. Inscriptions on monuments in King's Chapel 

Burial Ground. Boston, 1853. pp. 292, 293. 

Family Memorials by Edward E. Salisbury (p. 21) 1885. rrivately 

printed. 
—The Scotch-Irish in New England (George H. Smyth). In The Magazine 

of American History, vol. 9, p. 153. 
— Scotch-Irish in New England (W. Willis). In New England Historical 
and Genealogical Register, 12; 231. 
Canada. — Miller, Thomas. Historical and genealogical record of the first set- 
tlers of Colchester County down to the present time. Halifax, Nova Scotia: 

A. & W. MacKiulay, 1873. 
—Patterson, George. A History of the County of Pictou, Nova Scotia. 
Montreal : Dawson Brothers, 1877. 
Proud, Robert. History of Pennsylvania, 1681-1742. Philadelphia: 1797-98. 

2 V. 8°. 
Scotch-Irish in Pennsylvania. In New England Historical and Genealogical 

Register, 16; 360. 
Ramsay, David. History of South Carolina, 1670-1808. Charleston, 1809. 
2 V. 8°. 

—History of the American Revolution. Philadelphia, 1789. 2 v. 8°. 
— History of the Revolution in South Carolina. Trenton, 1785. 2 v. 8°. 
Baird, Robert. Religion in the United States of America. Glasgow and Lon- 
don, 1844. 
Craighead, J. G. Scotch and Irish Seeds in American Soil. Philadelphia: 

Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1878. 
Scotch-Irish (J. C. Linehan). In Granite Monthly, vol. 11. 
Scotch-Irish. Granite Monthly, vol. 12. 
Scotch-Irish in America (G. H. Smyth). In Magazine of American History, 

4; 161. 
McCulloch, Hugh. Men and measures of half a century. Charles Scribner's 

Sons, 1888. 
Appleton's Cyclopaxlia of American Biography, under the words '" Matthew 
Thornton," " Asa Gray," etc. 



APPENDIX. 



Letters which followed the appearance of brief reports of the contents 
of the foregoing paper in Boston newspapers. 

The Boston Traveller, May 1, 1895. 

SCOTCH-IRISH IN AMERICA. 

Thomas Hamilton Murray criticises Samuel Swett Green's Essay upon 
this subject. 

To the Editor : 

Lawrence, April 26.— I have just read a synopsis of the essay by 
Samuel Swelt Green, A.M., on the Scotch-Irish, so called, in America. 

The essay was delivered on April 2t, at a meeting in Boston of the 
American Antiquarian Society. 

While I have the greatest respect, personally, for Mr. Green, I am 
obliged to impugn his reliability as an historian when he treats of the 
" Scotch-Irish" shibboleth. I must also take issue with him both as 
regards his premises and conclusions in the essay just mentioned. I do 
this because both are fatally defective and based on radically false 
assumptions. Mr. Green, beyond all question, intended to be accurate 
and honest in his paper before the Antiquarian Society. His sources of 
information, however, were misleading and unfortunate. 

If I may take his paper as a criterion, he is not very well posted on 
Irish history — ancient, mediisval or modern. Neither, taking the same 
paper as a basis, does he appear to be well informed on the component 
elements of the Irish people. Lacking the essential basic knowledge, 
therefore, he has made a hodge-podge of the subject treated in endeav- 
oring to prove too much. 

This idea also seems to have struck Dr. Hale at the meeting in ques- 
tion, who wondered if Mr. Gi'een claimed Columbus as Scotch-Irish. 
The absurdity of some of the speaker's claims was also noted at the 
meeting by that excellent historian. Prof. Jameson of Brown University. 

Mr. Green, like most people who use the mistaken term " Scotch- 
Irish," appears to do so under the supposition that it is synonymous 
with Protestant-Irish. Not so. Thousands of Protestant-Irish are of 
English descent, with not a drop of Scotch blood in their veins.- Other 
thousands are of Huguenot extraction, a point with which Mr. Green 
does not appear to have been acquainted. Welsh, German and Dutch 
blood also enters materially into this Protestant-Irish element. 

The number of Protestant- Irish of English descent who came to the 
colonies, when compared with Protestant-Irish of possible Scotch 
descent, was as 8 to 1, while the number of Keltic or Catholic Irish who 
came at the same period was as 20 to 1. Yet, Mr. Green seems never to 
have heard of either the Anglo-Irish or the Catholic Irish in the up- 
building of New England. 

The Irish immigrants to this country who were actually of Scottish 
ancestry were at that time called, and were content to be called, merely 
Irish. It remained for a later generation of "historians," unable to 
suppress or deny the nationality of these comers, to dub them with what 
was intended to be a palliating term, Scotch-Irish. 

Mr. Green makes another blunder in regarding all Ulsterraen as of 
Scotch descent. With him the fact that a man hailed from the northern 



43 

province is sufficient to stamp him as " Scotch-Irish." To any student 
of Irish history the fallacy of this is at once evident. Why, some of the 
most ancient blood in Ireland comes from Ulster, and at the time of the 
English conquest thousands of Catholic Ulstermen were exiled and set- 
tled all along the New England coast, from Maine to Connecticut. 
These Mr. Green would no doubt calmly appropriate as " Scotch-Irish." 

His assertion that the SuUivans, John and James, were of Scotch ex- 
traction is so utterly nonsensical as not to merit a serious reply. 

His claim that the Perrys were " Scotch-Irishmen" will make Rhode 
Islanders laugh. The mother of the Perrys was content to be known as 
a plain, everyday Irish woman. She was a daughter of an Irish rebel, 
and was never guilty of using a "Scotch" or any other extenuating 
prefix. 

Mr. Green. would have us understand that emigration from Scotland 
to Ireland commenced at the beginning of the 17th century. In this he 
Is over a thousand years out of the way. Migration and emigration be- 
tween the two countries b^an many centuries earlier than the 17th, or 
when Scotland became an Irish crj[ony. When that was Mr. Green can 
easily ascertain by giving the matter proper attention and careful inquiry. 

Alluding to the Presbyterian Irish who settled at Worcester, Mr. 
Green again rings the changes on the " Scotch-Irish," and says they 
introduced the Irish potato. But to be consistent, why does he not call 
it the Scotch-Irish potato ? Why let the Irish-Irish have the credit ? 

In very truth this " Scotch-Irish" fad has become an unutterable bore. 
While some Irish people of immediate or remote Scottish descent did 
unquestionably come to these shores, not five per cent, of those claimed 
as such by current writers were really of Scotch extraction. And these 
were so hopelessly overwhelmed in numbers by other Irish who came, 
that any attempt to claim exclusive merit for the handful, can only 
result in mortification to the claimant. 

The Protestant John Mitchell declares that " Scotch-Irish is a cant 
term coined by bigots." He then goes on to state that in Ireland the 
term was seldom or never heard. 

A friend of mine, an Episcopalian, once said: " I notice that so long 
as an Irishman goes to the Roman Catholic Church he is spoken of as 
Irish ; but should he change his creed and frequent the Baptist or the 
Methodist Church he is immediately referred to by his new friends as 
' Scotch-Irish.' " This is a fair specimen of the shaky ground on which 
the shibboleth rests. 

Most Rev. Dr. Plunkett, Protestant archbishop of Dublin, speaking 
on the " Scotch " and other prefixes, eloquently disapproves the same 
and warmly declares : " In truth, we are simply Irish, and nothing else." 

Thomas Hamilton Murray. 

This letter also appeared in The Pilot, Boston, in the issue of May 11. 
Following is a reply which was printed in The Pilot of June 15. 

The same letter, substantially, had appeared in the Boston Traveller of 
May 3, in answer to Mr. Murray's letter of May 1. 

THE " SCOTCII-IRISH " AGAIN. 

Editor of The Pilot : 

WoRCESTEH, Mass., May 11, 1895. — A marked copy of The Pilot of 
to-day has been sent to me, calling my attention to a communication from 
Thomas Hamilton Murray, in which Mr. Murray criticises statements 
which he supposes me to have made in a paper which I read before the 
American Antiquarian Society recently, and opinions which he supposes 
me to hold. He is laboring under misapprehensions as to my views. 

Will you kindly allow me to correct some of these mistakes? They 



44 

arise mainly from the fact that Mr. Murray did not hear the paper read 
and has not liad an opportunity to read it himself. 

He writes: — "Thousands of Protestant-Irish are of English descent, 
with not a drop of Scotch blood in their veins. Other thousands are of 
Huguenot extraction, a point with which Mr. Green does not appear to 
have been acquainted." 

In my paper I stated that "William III. exerted himself to bring colo- 
nies of Huguenots to the North of Ireland after the revocation of the 
Edict of Nantes. I mentioned also English colonists. I stated, too, 
that the Irish who were of Scotch blood intermarried with those of 
English-Puritan and Huguenot blood in Ireland. My subject, however, 
was the Irish of Scotch blood. 

Mr. Murray says: "Mr. Green seems never to have heard of either 
the Anglo-Irish or the Catholic-Irish in the upbuilding of New Eng- 
land." I am perfectly aware that both of these classes of Irishmen have 
had great influence here, but, as stated before, I limited myself in the 
paper to the influence of the Irish of Scotch descent. 

Mr. Murray says : " The Irish immigrants to this country who were 
actually of Scottish ancestry were at that time called, and were content 
to be called, merely Irish." 

I have not supposed that the Irish of Scottish blood were content to 
be called "merely Irish." See, for example, the letter of Rev. James 
McGregor, of Londonderry, N. H., to Governor Shute of Massachusetts, 
as quoted by Jeremy Belknap, by Parker in his History of Londonderry, 
N. H. (p. 68), and Lincoln in his History of Worcester, Mass. (p. 49.) 

" Mr. Green makes another blunder," writes Mr. Murray, " in regard- 
ing all Ulster-men as of Scotch descent." 

I hold no such belief, but chose to single out the inhabitants of Ulster 
of Scotch descent. 

By reading a note appended to the names of General John Sullivan 
and Govei'nor James Sullivan in my paper, Mr. Murray would see that I 
agree with him in finding no reasons for believing that they had Scotch 
blood. Am I wrong in believing that Miss Sarah Alexander, of Newry, 
Ireland, who married the father of Oliver Hazard Perry, was the grand- 
daughter of James Wallace, an officer of the Scotch army and a signer 
of the Solemn League and Covenant, and that he fled in 1660 from 
County Ayr to the North of Ireland? If I am, I should be grateful to 
Mr. Murray if he would correct me. 

Mr. Murray says, "Mr. Green would have us understand that emigra- 
tion from Scotland to Ireland commenced at the beginning of the seven- 
teenth century." I would not have anybody so understand, but, as I 
stated at the beginning of my paper, I selected for treatment the emi- 
gration during that century. 

My old ^iend, Rev. Dr. Hale, expressed himself as much pleased with 
my paper, and would be very much surprised to learn that he was under- 
stood as disputing statements made by me because a jocose remark 
occurred to him. 

Professor Jameson, whom, with Mr. Murray, I regard as an " excellent 
historian," took particular pains to say, at the meeting where my paper 
was read, that he had no objections to make to any statements which I 
had made, but had some doubt about the Scotch descent of one or more 
of the persons mentioned in a quotation which I had made from the his- 
tory of Douglas Campbell. 

Remarks about the " Irish potato " were made by me in a letter which 
I sent to you a week ago, and it is unnecessary for me to repeat here 
what you already have in that letter. 

In regard to my sources of information, which Mr. Murray thinks 
were "misleading," I refer him to a somewhat long list of authorities 
given at the close of my paper. 



45 

I do not imagine that Mr. Murray and I could agree entirely, but I am 
sure that we agree more nearly than he has supposed, and that such an 
approach to agreement would appear if he were to read my paper. I 
hope that it will be printe ' in a few months; and when it is printed, he 
can learn, if he wishes, exactly what I have written. 

Samuel Swett Green. 

The letter in which there were remarks about the Irish potato was 
called out by the following paragraph in The Pilot of May 4 : 

There is something appropriate in the claim made by Dr. S. S. Green, 
of Worcester, before the American Antiquarian Society of Boston, on 
April 24, that the " Irish potato " was introduced into Worcester, as 
WL'll as into many other places in America, by the "Scotch-Irish." It 
was just like the enterprising Scotch-Irishman to do that. He is the 
only creature in the whole wide realm of fiction who would have 
thought of "introducing" a vegetable to the land of its birth. Some- 
body with time on his handstand a landaliie ambition to dispense the 
information, should tell the American Antiquarian Society that the 
potato is iudiaenous to America, and that the name " Irish potato" is 
as much a sham and a misnomer as the other name, " Scotch-Irish," 
with this dlflerence, that the vegetable is a reial potato of American 
origin, while the human hybrid is neither Scotch nor Irish. 

Following is the letter, with comments as it appeared in The Pilot of 
May 18. 

THE "hush" potato. 
Editor of The Pilot: 

Worcester, Mass., May 4, 1895. — Will you kindly allow me to cor- 
rect a mistake which was made by the writer of a paragraph in to-day's 
issue of your paper, regarding a statement recently made by me in an 
essay read before the American Antiquarian Society in Boston. 

The writer does not understand how the potato could have been intro- 
duced into Worcotcr and other places in this neighborhood dui'ing the 
eighteenth century when it is indigenous to America. 

There is no doubt that it is indigenous on this continent and no 
doubt that it was carried from this country to Europe in the sixteenth 
century. It is also true, however, that it. was introduced into Worces- 
ter and other places in this country in the eighteenth century by 
emigrants from the North of Ireland. 

About 200 persons, who were a portion of a party of three or four 
times that number which arrived in Boston, August 4, 1718, went to 
Worcester, and were among its earlier settlers. 

Most of this body of emigrants from the North of Ireland were of 
Scotch extraction, as is well known. A few of them, however, were 
of pure Irish blood. Of the latter was a family of Youngs who went 
to Worcester. They are credited with the introduction of the potato 
there. The people of Worcester knew little or nothing about that 
vegetable before. Their ignorance is shown by an anecdote which 
has come down to us and which is narrated in Lincoln's History of 
Worcester. 

After writing that " it is remarkable that the esculent, now considered 
essentially necessary for table and farm should have been introduced at 
a period so late," Lincoln continues: " It is related, that some of our 
early inhabitants, after enjoying the hospitality of one of the Irish 
famdies, were each presented with a few potatoes for planting. Unwill- 
ing to give offence by refusing the present, thej' accepted the donation; 
but suspecting the poisonous quality, they carried the roots only to the 



46 

nest swamp, and there threw them away, as unsafe to enter their 
homes." (p. 49, note 2.) 

Speaking of the portion of the emigrants from the Nortli of Ireland 
who came over in 1718 and, with others of their countrymen who soon 
joined them, settled at Londonderry, N. H., Parker, the historian 
of that town, writes: "They introduced the culture of the potato, 
which they brought with them from Ireland. Until their arrival, this 
reliable vegetable, now regarded as one of the necessaries of life, if not 
wholly unknown, was not cultivated in New England. To them belongs 
the credit of its introduction to general use. Althongh highly prized 
by this company of settlers, it was for a long time but little regarded by 
their English neighbors, a barrel or two being considered a supply for a 
family. But its value as food for man and for beast became at length 
more generally known, and who can now estimate the full advantage of 
its cultivation to this country! The following well-authenticated fact 
will show how little known to the community at large the potato must 
have been. 

A few of the settlers had passed the winter previous to their establish- 
ment here, in Andover, Mass. On taking their departure from one of 
the families, Avith whom they had resided, they left a few potatoes for 
seed. The potatoes were accordingly planted; some came up and 
flourished well; blossomed and produced balls, which the family sup- 
posed were the fruit to be eaten. They cooked the balls in various 
ways, but could not make them palatable, and pronounced them unfit 
for food. The next spring, while ploughing their garden, the plough 
passed through where the potatoes had grown, and turned out some of 
great size, by which means they discovered their mistake." (pp. 48 
and 49.) 

It appears natural after this statement of facts that the potato should 
have been very generally called the Irish potato, in Worcester and else- 
where. 

I remember perfectly that in my boyhood, fifty years ago, and after- 
wards when we had two kinds of potatoes on the table, in my father's 
family, we were always asked whether we would have a sweet potato 
or an Irish potato. The name is still used to a considerable extent. 

Truly yours, 

Samuel Swett Green. 

[We make room, with pleasure, for Mr. Green's letter. It was only 
in the interest of historical accuracy that we deprecated the use of the 
term "Irish potato," as that esculent is a peculiarly American product; 
and, as Mr. Green avows, it certainly is not a " Scotch-Irish " vegetable. 
The introduction of the American potato into Ireland was, unhappily, a 
Nessus-gift. The fatal facility of its culture led the people to place 
unwise dependence upon it; so that when the "blight" of 1847 came, 
they found themselves without other means of existence, and, as a con- 
sequence, 1,225,000 human beings died of the " Great Famine" of that 
year. It was a sad day for Ireland when it first knew the potato; but 
if America has profited by its repatriation, give the credit to Irish, not 
Scotch, Ireland. — Editor Pilot. 

Mr. Murray continued the correspondence by sending the following 
letter to the Worcester Telegravi, June 27, 1895. 

To the Editor of The Telegram : 

Samuel Swett Green, A. M., of Worcester, a short time ago read a 
paper in Boston before the American Antiquarian Society. His subject 
was the Scotch-Irish, so-called, among our early immigrants. 

I took exceptions to many statements by Mr. Green as they were 
reported in the Boston journals at the time, several days having elapsed 



47 

between the appearance of said reports and the publication of my 
criticism. 

As Mr. Green had not questioned the general accuracy of these news- 
paper reviews of his essay, I was entirely justified in malting them the 
basis of my objections. And this the more so, from the fact that the 
different papers— the Globe, Journal and others — practically agreed in 
their statement of the salient points. 

Since then Mr. Green has replied, both in the Boston Traveller and the 
Boston Pilot, to the adverse criticism I had advanced. I wish to ac- 
knowledge at the outset the courteous language of his reply, and his 
frank, honest method of discussing the subject with me. It is a pleas- 
ure to have a disputant of Mr. Green's ability, character and good 
nature. His calm, judicial mind is not Impervious to argument, nor 
does he close his ears, because he may, perhaps, hear something that 
runs counter to previously conceived ideas. 

Mr. Green says: "I do not imagine that Mr. Murray and I coulct 
agree entirely, but I am sure that we agree more nearly than he has sup- 
posed, and that such an approach to agreement would appear if he were 
to read my paper." 

I am glad Mr. Green displays this conciliatory spirit of arbitration, 
for it goes a great way toward a satisfactory discussion of the subject. 

In answer to my criticisms he makes several important admissions, 
viz. : (1) People from the north of Ireland are not necessarily of Scotch 
descent. (2) Thousands of north of Ireland Protestants and thousands 
of Protestants from other parts of Ireland have come to this country 
who were not of Scottish ancestry. (3) The term Scotch-Irish is not 
equivalent to that of Protestant-Irish. (4) The Catholic Irish have had 
great influence here, before, during and since the revolution. (5) The 
Sullivans, John and James, were not of Scottish ancestry. Several other 
admissions are likewise made by Mr. Green, all of which bring us nearer 
together in point of general agreement. 

Mr. Green says in explanation of his paper that he limited himself to 
"the Irish of Scotch descent." 

Ah ! that is better. So long as he strictly adheres to it — not claiming 
as of Scotch descent Irishmen who are not — just so long will he have 
no contention. Eather do I praise him for his efforts in that respect. 

Any writer who honestly aims to give any section of Irish settler's in 
this country a deserved meed of praise shall always have my respect and 
encouragement. It is only when Irish are claimed as of Scotch descent 
who are not, or when exclusive merit is claimed for those who are, I 
object. In this respect I think that Mr. Green will frankly admit that 
my position is an entirely proper one. 

No man of sense can properly object to the term "Irish of Scotch 
descent," when rightly used, whereas the term " Scotch-Irish" is open 
to very grave objections from many points of view. Mr. Green will, I 
think, recognize the point. 

We of the old Irish race draw no invidious distinctions, but receive 
into brotherhood all born on Irish soil, or of Irish parents, regardless of 
creed and no matter where their grandfather or great-grandfather may 
have come from. 

It is a fact, as no doubt- Mr. Green is aware, that thousands of north 
of Ireland Catholics are of Scottish descent on one side or the other. It 
is also true that many of the best friends of Irish nationality, autonomy 
and independence have been of the same element, Protestant and Cath- 
olic. But they were simply " Irish," look you. They weighted down 
their birthright with no extenuating prefix or palliating affix. 

It is a blunder to suppose that all the Irish settlers in New Hampshire 
were of " Scottish descent." Many of the most prominent who located 



48 

there were not. Yet because some were, hasty writers have jumped to 
the condusion that all were of Scotch ancestrj'. A more lamentable 
error it would be difficult to fall into. 

I stated in my first reply to Mr. Green tiiat the early Irish immigrants 
to this country who were actually (and not by recent pretence) of 
Scottish ancestry were content to be called merely Irish. Mr. Green 
appears unwilling to admit this and quotes a letter of Rev. James 
McGregor, of Londonderry, N. H., to Gov. Shute, of Massachusetts. 
But while McGregor may have been unwilling to acl'inowledge himself 
or his immediate associates as pure, unalloyed Irish, there is no real 
evidence that the bulk of New Hampshire's Irish settlers agreed with 
him. Lincoln, the Worcester historian, no matter how excellently 
informed in other respects, cannot, to my mind, be recognized as an 
authority on early Irish immigration. And this comment must also ap- 
, ply to Dr. Hale and Prof. Jameson — both of whom are admirably posted 
on other phases of New England history, but lamentably deficient in this. 

Against McGregor, above mentioned, I place McSparran. Parson 
McSparran, I need not tell Mr. Green, was an Irish Protestant clergy- 
man who for nearly forty years (from 1721) was rector of St. Paul's 
Church in Narragansett. Although of Scottish ancestry and partly edu- 
cated in Scotland, he never spoke of himself as " Scotch-Irish." Yet if 
the term were ever justifiable, it would have been so in his case. The 
expression " Scotch-Irish " never occurs in McSparran's writings. He 
always alludes to himself as "Irish," as being an "Irishman," and as 
able to speak, read and write "the Irish language." He was proud of 
his Irish nationality, and while not loving the land of his ancestors less, 
admired that of his nativity more. 

McSparran in his quaint work, American Dissected, thus speaks of 
early New Hampshire settlers : 

" In this province lies that town called London-Derry, all Irish, and 
famed for industry and riches." 

Leaving New Hampshire, he continues : 

"Next you enter Main (e), which, in its civil government, is annexed 
to the Massachusetts, as Sagadahock also is, and both rather by use than 
right. In these two eastern provinces many Irish are settled, and many 
have been ruined by the French Indians." 

No mention of "Scotch-Irish," you will notice! Yet McSparran 
was in close touch with his countrymen throughout New England. 
Again he writes : 

"It is pretty true to observe of the Irish, that those who come here 
with any wealth are the worse for their removal, though doubtless the 
next generation will not suffer so much as their fathers; but those who, 
Avheu they came, had nothing to lose, have throve greatly by their 
labors." 

Again, referring to Pennsylvania, he says : " By the accessions of the 
Irish and Germans, they threaten, in a few years, to lessen the Ameri- 
can demands for Irish and other European linens." 

Speaking of Maryland, McSparran declares " There are some Quakers 
here * * * ami some Irish Presbyterians, owing to the swarms 
that, for many years past, have winged their way westward out of the 
great Hibernian hive." 

Referring to Pennsylvania, he writes: "The Irish are numerous in 
this province, who, besides their interspersions among the English and 
others, have peopled a whole county by themselves, called the county 
of Donegal, with many other new out-towns and districts." 

McSparran gives absolutely no indication that he ever heard of the 
" Scotch-Irish" term. Certainly he never used it personally. His 
family, education and good sense placed him above such a cowardly 



49 

subterfuge. A short time before liis death he forwarded his diplomas 
of master and doctor to a cousin in Ireland, requesting that they be 
registered in the parish registry of Dungiven "so that my relatives in 
time to come might be able to speak of me with authority." Thus he 
marked for all time his identity as an Irishman. 

The colonial records repeatedly mention the "Irish," not the Scotch- 
Irish. Cotton Mather in a sermon in 1700 says: "At length it was 
proposed that a colony of Irish might be sent over to check the. growth 
of this countrey." No prefix there. The party of immigrants remaining 
at Falmouth, IVIe., over winter, and which later settled in Londonderry, 
N. H., were alluded to in the records of the general court as "poor Irish." 

On St. Patrick's day, 1700, Irish of Portsmouth, N. H., instituted 
St. Patrick's lodge of Masons. Pretty good proof that they were con- 
tent to be called merely " Irish." Later we tind Stark's rangers at Fort 
Edward requesting an extra supply of grog so as to properly observe 
the anniversary of St. Patrick. Very little comfort here for your 
"Scotch-Irish" theorist. 

Rev. John Moorhead, a Presbyterian minister of Boston, was born in 
the north of Ireland and received much of his education in Scotland. 
Yet he wished to be regarded as mere "Irish." In proof of this he 
joined the Charitable Irish Society of Boston in 1730, and made an ad- 
dress on that occasion. Only men of Irish birth or exti-action could be 
admitted to actual membership in the society then as now. Mr. Moor- 
head in being thus admitted so acknowledged himself. His congregation 
is described by Drake, Condon, CuUen and other authorities, as being 
composed of " Irish Presbyterians." 

No mention whatever is made of any " Scotch-Irish " in the neighbor- 
hood. 

Marmion's maritime ports of Ireland states that "Irish families" 
settled Londonderry, N. H. Spencer declares that "the manufacture 
of linen was considerably increased by the coming of Irish immigrants." 
In 1723, says Condon, "a colony of Irish settled in Maine." Mooi-e, in 
his sketch of Concord, N. H., pays tribute to the "Irish settlers" in 
that section of New England. McGee speaks of " the Irish settlement 
of Belfast," Me. The same author likewise declares that " Irish families 
also settled early at Palmer and Worcester, Mass." Cullen describes 
the arrival at Boston in 1717 of Capt. Robert Temple, " with a number 
of Irish Protestants." Capt. Temple was, in 1740, elected to the Chari- 
table Irish Society. In another place Cullen alludes to "the Irish 
spinners and weavers who landed in Boston in the earlier part of the 
18th century." 

Many persons who continually sing the praises of the so-called 
" Scotch-Irish " stand in serious danger of being considered not only 
Ignorant but positively dishonest. Their practice is to select any or all 
Irishmen who have attained eminence in American public life, lump 
them together and label the lump " Scotch-Irish." 

Among those who have been thus wrongly claimed are Carroll, Sulli- 
van, Knox, Moylan, Wayne, Barry, Clinton, Montgomery, Elliott, Hand 
and a host of others. Of a later period, Jackson, Calhoun, Meade and 
Sheridan have been ridiculously styled " Scotch-Irish." The late John 
Boyle O'Reilly has not yet been so styled, but no doubt will be after he 
has been dead long enough to make it comparatively safe. 

Of the revolutionary heroes mentioned above, Charles Carroll was of 
old Irish stock. His cousin, John Carroll, was a Roman Catholic clergy- 
man, a Jesuit, a patriot, a bishop and archbishop. Daniel Carroll was 
another sterling patriot. 

The SuUivans, James and John, were also of ancient Irish stock, the 
name having been O'Sullivan even in their father's time. 
4 



50 

Gen. Knox and his father were both members of the Charitable Irish 
Society of Boston. The general also belonged to the Friendly Sons of 
St. Patrick, Philadelphia. 

Moylan was a brother of the Roman Catholic bishop of Cork. Quickly 
would he have repudiated the term " Scotch-Irish." 

Wayne was of Irish descent and proud of his Irish lineage. There is 
abundant evidence of this did space allow me to present it. He was an 
active member of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick. 

Barry was an Irish Roman Catholic. It was he who, when met by an 
English frigate on the high seas, replied to the commander's demand as 
to who he was, with "The United States ship Alliance, saucy Jack 
Barry, half Irishman, half Yankee — Who are you?" 

The Clintons, George and James, were sons of a county Longford 
Irishman, who with a large family immigrated from Ireland in 172'J. 

Montgomery was an Irishman by birth and patriotism, and a native 
of county Donegal. His father was a member of the Irish parliament. 

Brig. -Gen. Elliott was a member of the Charitable Irish Society of 
Boston, and at one time its president. 

Hand was a native of Kings county, Ireland, and served in France 
with the Irish brigade. During our revolution he attained the rank of 
brigadier-general, and was a great favorite with Washington. 

All the foregoing would have laughed had any attempt been made in 
their lifetime to tag them " Scotch-Irish." 

Mr. Green asks : "Am I wrong in believing that Miss Sarah Alexan- 
der of Newry, Ireland, who married the father of Oliver Hazard Perry, 
was the grandaughter of James Wallace, an officer in the Scotch army 
and a signer of the Solemn League and Covenant, and that he fled in 
1660 from county Ayr to the north of Ii-eland? If I am, should be 
gratified to Mr. Murray if he would correct me." 

No general correction is necessary. Miss Alexander's grandfather, 
at least on the paternal side, was Scotch. But what of it? Sarah, his 
grandaughter, was an Irish woman — Irish by birth, education, sympathy 
and association. Would Mr. Green consider himself the less an Ameri- 
can because his grandfather happened to be English or Irish or Scotch? 
Certainly not! He cannot, therefore, apply the law of nationality in 
his own case and refuse its application in that of Sarah Alexander. A 
man of his clear sense and logical mind will not, I am sure, after think- 
ing it over, have any desire to do so. 

Prejudiced or poorly informed writers have made sad work of this 
" Scotch-Irish " business. Thus Henry Cabot Lodge gives the absurd 
definition of "Scotch-Irish" as being "Protestant in religion and 
chiefly Scotch and English in blood." This has only been equalled in 
absurdity by Dr. Mcintosh, who defined this elusive element as " not 
Scotch nor Irish, but rather British." Here we have two gentlemen 
claiming to speak as with authority, yet unable to agree even in first 
essentials. What an excellent farce, indeed, is all this. 

Probably no man in recent years has done more to shatter the "Scotch- 
Irish" fallacy than Hon. John C. Linehan, the present state insurance 
commissioner of New Hampshire. His vast researches and able articles 
relative to the early settlers justly entitle him to be considered the his- 
torian of the Irish in the Granite state. His recent contributions on 
"How the Irish came as builders of the nation" contain amass of 
priceless information regarding the Irish pioneers in Londonderry, 
Antrim, Dublin and other New Hampshire places. 

Returning to the Charitable Irish Society, it should be stated that all 
the founders were Protestants — chiefly Presbyterians. Some of them 
were from the North of Ireland and may have had Scottish forefathers. 
But whether they had or not, all wished to be considered as simply 



51 

"Irish." Had they desired to be considered "Scotch rather than 
Irish," they would have joined the Scotcli Charitable Society— wliich 
was already in existence in Boston. But no! They wanted a distinc- 
tively Irish organization, and consequently founded one on St. Patricli's 
day, 1737. You will particularly note that they named it the Charitable 
Irish Society and not the Charitable Scotch-Irish Society. Indeed, they 
make no use at any time of the latter hyphenated expression. 

We admire the upright, sturdy Irishman; we have respect for the 
genuine Scotchman. But for the man who through ignorance or asso- 
ciation is ashamed of his native land, and who represents himself as 
something he is not, we have only pity and contempt in about equal 
parts. The most sincere Orangeman I ever knew never dreamt of 
denying that he was an Irishman. With the mass of his countrymen he 
did not agree in religion or politics. But he knew, as they did, that 
these matters were separate, apart and distinct from his nativity or 
nationality. 

But enough ! Truth only is permanent. False assumptions, mistaken 
theories or deliberate misrepresentation may create for a time a certain 
impression. In the end, however, cold, stern, unrelenting fact will 
always prevail. 

Thomas Hamilton Murray. 

Lawrence, Mass., June 26, 1895. 

The foregoing letter also appeared in the Boston Herald of June 28. 
The following reply was printed in the Worcester Daily Telegram of 
June 28. It was cut out from a copy of the Telegram and sent to the 
Boston Herald, but was not printed by that paper. 

To the Editor of The Telegram :— 

A very courteous letter appeared in this morning's Telegram from 
Thomas Hamilton Murray of Lawrence, in continuance of a corre- 
spondence regarding statements made by me in a paper read at the 
semi-annual meeting of the American Antiquarian Society, held in 
Boston the 24th of April last. Please allow me to say a few words in 
reply. 

As no part of the correspondence has appeared in a Worcester paper, 
in so far as I know, I can best introduce the whole subject by askiug 
you to print the following letter, which appeared in the Boston Pilot, 
June 15, in answer to a letter which was printed in the Pilot of May 11, 
and which had appeared before in the Boston Traveller of May 1. A 
reply from me appeared in the Traveller May 3. The reply in the Pilot, 
although written May 11, was delayed in its appearance until June 15. 

Here followed Mr. Green's first reply to Mr. Murray. The second 
letter went on as follows : 

It appears from this letter that what Mr. Murray calls " admissions " 
were denials that I had made certain statements and held views which 
he supposed me to hold.* Mr. Murray gives reasons and extracts to 
show that the Irish of Scotch descent who came here in the 17th 
century were content to be called " merely Irish." 

Now, I have no doubt that to a very considerable extent they asso- 
ciated with other Irishmen, and especially with Presbyterians from the 
North of Ireland, not of Scotch extraction, and I know that the name 
Irish was frequently applied to men of Scotch blood who had lived in 



* A misprint. I wrote " denials that I had made certain statements which 
he had supposed me to make and that I held views which he had supposed me 
to hold." 



52 

Ireland.* iBut there was strong feeling, too, between many of the 
Catholic and Protestant Irish, which began when the Scotch went to 
the North of Ireland in large numbers in the earlier parts of the 17th 
century) and* which was intensified by the troubles in 1688 between 
James II. and William III. There was a prejudice in this country, too, 
regarding the Irish. 

It is believed in Worcester that one of the reasons why the settlers 
from the North of Ireland who came here in 1718 were cruelly treated, 
was that they were victims of that prejudice. Rev. Mr. McGregor's 
letter probably represented the views of many emigrants from the 
North of Ireland, on being termed " merely Irish." 

Last May I received a letter from Hon. Leonard A. Morrison of 
Cauobie Lake, N. H., in which he wrote: "I am one of Scotch-Irish 
blood, and my ancestors came with Hev. Mr. McGregor of Londonderry, 
and neither they nor any of their descendants were willing to be called 
' merely Irish.' I have twice visited the parish of Aghedovvary,"* county 
Londonderry, from which they came in Ireland, and all that locality is 
filled, not with Irish, but with Scotch-Irish, and this is pure Scotch 
blood to-day, after more than 200 years. I can show you families here 
of as pure Scotch blood as you can find in the lowlands of Scotland, 
where there has never been a marriage with any but those of Scotch 
blood." 

Mr. Morrison is the author of the History of Windham and several 
other books in which he has to deal largely with Irish of Scotch descent. 
I am not writing in a polemical spirit, but simply as a student of history, 
and it seems to me as such that a large portion of the emigrants from 
the North of Ireland in the 17th century were as proud of their Scottish 
descent as emigrants from Ireland of the last 50 years are proud of 
their Irish descent. 

I do not understand why the late William Lincoln should not be 
trusted when he writes about the earlier settlers in Worcester from 
the North of Ireland. About 200 of the immigrants who reached 
Boston in August, 1718, from the North of Ireland came to Worcester. 
That number was as great probably as the population found here when 
they came. The new comers were, therefore, an important portion of 
the population of Worcester, whose history Mr. Lincoln wrote in such 
manner that his work holds a high place among town histories. He 
spoke of the colony of persons who came here in 1718 from the North 
of Ireland as " Scots." It seems to me that Jeremy Belknap, Rev. Mr. 
McGregor, and Messrs. Morrison and Lincoln may be trusted in regard 
to representations made by them respecting bodies of men among whose 
descendants they were living and about whom they had prepared them- 
selves to write. 

In regard to the use of the term Scotch-Irish, I did not realize that I 
should give offence by employing it, and I probably should have used 
some other designation to convey my meaning rather than irritate bodies 
of men whom I respect. I used the word, however, only in a descrip- 
tive sense, just as I sometimes use the terms Afro-American and Swed- 
ish-American. I entirely agree with Mr. Murray that, generally speak- 
ing, it is best not to use words which show the diflerences of the 
inhabitants of a country rather than the things which they hold in com- 
mon. For example, it is better to speak generally of Americans, rather 
than Irish-Americans or French-Americans. 

Still men must make themselves understood in writing, and it is some- 
times very convenient for purposes of description to place an adjective 
indicative of blood before the name denoting nationality. Thus, upon 



* Misprint for Aghadowey. 



53 

taking up a newspaper this morning, which recognizes in the highest 
degree the services of our fellow citizens of Irish blood, I fonnd it 
speaking for descriptive purposes of " Irish-Americans." . , 

Mr. Murray asks : " Would Mr. Green consider himself less an Amer- 
ican because his grandfather hai)pened to be English or Irish o'r Scotch?" 
"Certainly not," * is his answer. Still if one of my grandfathers had been 
a Scotchman I do not think that I should be troubled, if I showed Scotch 
characteristics, should my acquaintances speak of me as a Scotch-Amer- 
ican. It so happens that one of my grandmothers, Nancy Barber, was 
a descendant of one of the early settlers in Worcester of Scotch extrac- 
tion. I have so little of her blood in my veins, however, that I suppose 
that nobody would think of calling me either an Irishman or Scotchman 
or Scotclj-American. I think that I should preserve my equanimity 
were either of the three designations applied to me. 

Mr. Murray speaks of the inconsistent definitions which are given by 
authors to the term Scotch-Irish. In so far as I am concerned, I gave 
my own definition on the first page of my paper, as follows : "The 
Scotch-Irish, as I understand the meaning of the term, are Scotchmen 
who emigrated to Ireland and such descendants of those emigrants as 
had not, through intermarriage with the Irish proper, or others, lost 
their Scotch characteristics. Both emigrants and their descendants, if 
they remained long in Ireland, experienced certain changes, apart from 
those which are brought about by mixture of blood, through the influ- 
ence of new surroundings." 

Mr. Murray speaks of the mistakes which have been made in ascrib- 
ing Scotch blood to distinguished Irishmen. Of the persons named by 
liim I have not claimed Scotch extraction for Carroll, Sullivan, Moylan, 
Wayne, Barry, Elliott, Hand, Meade or Sheridan. Nor do I expect to 
claim it for my friend, the late John Boyle O'Reilly, nor for my corres- 
pondent, and I think I may add, my friend, Mr. Murray, for either he or 
a predecessor on the Lawrence American has praised highly my methods 
of library management, still I must add that the Christian name " Ham- 
ilton " is a little suspicious. It has a Scotch look, and I am inclined to 
think that my friend may be related to Lord Dufferin, the descendant of 
the Nobleman Hamilton, who led a colony of Scotchmen into Ireland in 
James the first's time. 

In regard to Knox, Clinton, Montgomery, Jackson and Calhoun, I 
must ask Mr. Murray to consider the testimony brought forward in the 
notes to my paper. Mr. Murray will be glad to hear that I have referred 
to some of Mr. Linehan's writings in the list of sources of information 
at the end of my paper. f I will try to add, if not too late. Parson 
McSparran's work. J 

I do not find it easy to reconcile Mr. Murray's statements regarding 
Rev. Dr. Hale and Prof. Jameson. In his letter in the Traveller and Pilot, 
in speaking of me as " lacking the essential basic knowledge" and so as 



* I inserted the word " as" before " is." The omission in printing led Mr. 
Murray, it will be seen, to suppose that I had avoided a direct answer to a ques- 
tion which he asked. 

t Honorable John C. Linehan, Insurance Commissioner of the State of New 
Hampshire, has written several papers on the Scotch-Irish. He is of Irish 
blood and objects strenuously to the use of the term " Scotch-Irish," I wrote 
to him for a list of his writings in order that I might priat it here. He could 
not give me one, but wrote that he expects to make a collection, in pamphlet 
form, of his papers, on the general subject under consideration and have it 
printed the coming autumn (1895). 

J For a reprint of America Dissected, by Rev. J. McSparran, I). D., see an 
appendix to History of the Episcopal Church in Narragansett, Rhode Island, 
by Wilkius Updike. New York, 18i7. 
*4 



54 

having " made a hodge-podge of the subject treated in endeavoring to 
prove too much," he wrote : " This idea also seems to have struck Dr. 
Hale at the meeting in question. * * The absurdity of some of the 
speaker's claims was also aoted at the meeting by that excellent histo- 
rian, Prof. Jameson of Brown University." In the letter in this morn- 
ing's Telegram Mr. Murray, after saying that Lincoln cannot be " recog- 
nized as an authority on early Irish immigration," goes on to say : 
"And this comment must also apply to Dr. Hale and Prof. Jameson, both 
of whom are admirably posted on other phases of New England history, 
but lamentably deficient in this." Why the change in the e.'^timate of 
these two men ? Is it because they supported me in my views instead 
of opposing me ? 

Dr. Hale has wide interests and, I presume, knows much about Ireland 
and Scotland, and the Scotch wiio settled in Ireland. Prof. Jameson 
intimated at the meetins of the American Antiquarian Society at which 
ray paper was read, that he was descended from an Irishman of Scotch 
extraction. He seemed, too, to be interested in the subject of my paper, 
and to have knowledge regarding it. 

Yours truly, 

Samuel Swett Green. 

Mr. Murray wrote again to the Worcester Daily Telegram. This letter 
was in the paper of July 8. 

To the Editor of The Telegram :— 

Samuel Swett Green in your issue of the 28th ult., replies to my 
communication of a day or two previous anent the "Scotch-Irish," so 
called. 

I take exceptions to certain points advanced by him in his latest con- 
tribution, as I have to others which he had previously brought forward. 

Still, there is so much in his present reply in the nature of concession 
to my position, that our bone of contention is being rapidly reduced to 
a minimum. This is practically the outcome Mr. Green indicated would 
result as soon as we got together and compared views and notes. In 
his latest reply Mr. Green thus manfully writes : — 

" In regard to the use of the term Scotch-Irish, I did not realize that 
I should give offence by employing it, and I probably should have used 
some other designation to convey my meaning rather than irritate 
bodies of men whom I respect. I used the word, however, only in a 
descriptive sense, just as I sometimes use the terms Afro-American and 
Swedish-American. I entirely agree with Mr. Murray that, generally 
speaking, it is best not to use words which show the differences of the 
inhabitants of a country rather than the things which they hold in com- 
mon. For example, it is better to speak generally of Americans, rather 
than Irish-Americans or French-Americans." 

After this candid admission very little remains to be said. So much 
of what I have been contending for is comprised in it that a vast 
amount of debris has been cleared away, thus enabling us to survey the 
field to better advantage. 

The ten'dency nowadays among Americans of Irish extraction, is to 
drop the prefix Irish, and it is well that this is so. No more patriotic 
Americans can be found than those of immediate or remote Irish 
descent. And this has been so from the beginning. Ten years ago I 
wrote in the Boston Globe on the staff of which I was at the lime, that 
it was in bad taste to insist on hampering an American on every possi- 
ble occasion, with the prefix "Irish" or "German" or "French" or 
" Scotch." With as much or as little sense might the late Robert C. 
Winthrop be spoken of as an " English-American," or the Knickerbocker 
element in New York continue to be labelled " Dutch- Americans." 



55 

But the principle heroin fnntaiiicd is not of recent conception. The 
bullv of the most profjre.st.ive aud highly educated people in Ireland of 
Scottish descent, have for centuries held lilie sentiments. In their 
own estimation they were " Irish" and wished to he so regarded. The 
evidence on this point is so overwhelmingly abundant that it seems a 
waste of time to dwell upon it. A few there were, no doubt, who were 
ashamed of tlieir Irish nationality just as we liave in our country to-day 
a certain class of wretched Anglo-maniacs who, despising their birth- 
right, can admire nothing save what is English. 

Tliese patriotic Irish of Scotch descent, mentioned above, objected to 
being loaded doAvn with a foreign prefix on the same principle that we 
Americans object to similar hyphenated terms. And they were right as 
we are fight. What then must be thought of people to-day in this 
country who persistently label themselves Scotch-Irish or Scotch-Irish- 
Americans? Very little that is complimentary, I am sure. 

Mr. Green quotes Hon. Leonard A. Morrison of Canobie Lake, N. H., 
who boasts that even after 200 years residence in Ireland his family 
still remained aliens. I pity the man who would make such a boast. 
At the same time, I can hardly suppress a smile at Mr. Morrison's break- 
neck anxiety to get away from the awful suspicion that he may be con- 
sidered "merely Irish." But he is handicapped at the outset. His 
name — Morrisoq^— is deplorably Irish. In fact, few names can trace a 
longer pure Irish pedigree than his. The Morrison families, too, were 
proud ones among the old Irish nobility. The stem goes back to a 
period anterior even to the Irish colonization of Scotland. If Mr. 
Morrison wants pedigree and ancestral glory he will stick to Ireland. 
Still there is no accounting for tastes, and if he wishes to cut loose 
from the ancient Irish stock, we, who glory in that stock, will make no 
effort to detain him. 

Hon. John C. Linehan, the historian of the Irish in New Hampshire, 
and now Insurance Commissioner of the State, thus writes: — 

" In these latter days a new school of writer's has sprung up, whose 
pride of ancestry outstrips their knowledge, and whose prejudices 
blind their love of truth. With the difference in religion between cer- 
tain sections of the Irish people as a basis, they are bent in creating a 
a new race, christening it ' Scotch-Irish,' labormg hard to prove that it 
is a ' brand ' superior to either of the two old types, and while clinging 
to the Scotch root, claim that their ancestors were different from the 
Irish in blood, morals, language and religion. This is a question not 
difficult to settle for those who are disposed to treat it honestly, but, as 
a rule, the writers who are the most prolific, as well as the speakers who 
are the most eloquent, know the least about the suljject, and care less, 
if they can only succeed in having their theories accepted. The Irish 
origin of the Scots is studiously avoided by nearly all the Scotch-Irish 
writers, or if mentioned at all, is spoken of in a manner which leaves 
the reader to infer that the Scots had made a mistake in selecting their 
ancestors, and it was the duty of their descendants, so far as it lay in 
their power, to rectify the error. 

What a vast difference there is between the contracted spirit shown 
by Mr. Morrison, and the love for Ireland and the Irish which the 
great, big hearted Dr. McSparran displayed. What a difference, too, 
betw^een Mr. Morrison, who tries to avoid kindred with the pure, unal- 
loyed Irish, and Gen. John McNeil, another descendant of a London- 
derry settler, who in 1830, joined the Charitable Irish Society, thus 
wishing to identify himself with the Sons of Hibernia. 

In my previous letter to The Telegram alluding to Parson McSpar- 
ran's work, the types made me say 'Americans Dissected," it should 
be " America Dissected." Also when referring to St. Patrick's lodge 



56 

of Masons, the date should have been 1770 and not 1700, as it appeared 
in print. 

Commissioner Linehan says in spealiing of the Irish arrivals in 
Worcester: "Rev. Edward Fitzgerald (a Scotch name in no sense 
whatever) was the first pastor of the Presbyterian clmrch in Worces- 
ter, in 1718. His congregation had rather a sorry time of it trying to 
establisli themselves in the Heart of the Commonwealth. The margin 
between the Congregational and Presbyterian churches was narrow, 
but the former widened it by tearing down the church of the new- 
comers, not leaving the timber, even, on the ground. . . John Young 
came to Worcester in 1718, from Ireland, with his family. The town 
historian, Lincoln, wrote that the ' Scotch-Irish ' were accompanied by 
a few of ihe native Irish, and mentions Young as one of them; and that 
he was the first man to introduce the cultivation of the potato in 
Worcester. Here is a concession the mere Irish ought to be thankful for 
— that there were even a few came; but it certainly is queer that their 
Boston brethren persisted in calling themselves Irish, notwithstanding 
they were as Protestant as the Worcester or New Hampshire people of 
the same period." 

Why anybody of Irish birth or descent should try to sink his glorious 
heritage and seek to establish himself as " Scotch rather than Irish," is 
something I cannot understand. Ireland possesses a far more ancient 
civilization than either Scotland or England. Her hagiology, her edu- 
cational institutions, her old nobility, her code of laws, her jurispru- 
dence, are of much greater antiquity. "The Irish," declares Collins, 
"colonized Scotland, gave to it a name, a literature and a language, 
gave it a hundred songs and gave it Christianity." For additional 
evidence on this point see Knight, Lingard, Chambers, Lecky, "Vener- 
able Bede, Buckle, Pinkerton, Logan, Thebaud, Sir Henry Maine and 
other authors. 

Mr. Joseph Smith, an Irish Protestant of Lowell, Mass., in a letter to 
the Pilot in September, 1892, alluding to a writer who dwells upon the 
" Scotch-Irish," says : — 

"I object as an Irishman and a Protestant to having my race and 
religion misrepresented, and I most vigorously protest against a 
Scotchman's posing as the mouthpiece and defender of Irish Protes- 
tanism. The Irish Protestants need no defender; they have always 
been amply able to take care of themselves, and they have always been 
honorably prominent in the efl'orts to ameliorate the condition of their 
country and give it a strong nationality in which the question of relig- 
ious faith should be merely incidental and unimportant. Irish Protes- 
tants are Irish, and they never had and never needed Scotch aid to fight 
their battles. . . . 

". . . My people have lived in Ulster for hundreds of years, but we 
were never stigmatized as Scotch-Irish. We of Ulster, Protestant and 
Catholic, are Irish, pure and simple; and Irish nationality, undiluted by 
Scotch vinegar or British water, is quite good enough for us. The 
strength of the movement of '83 was in Ulster ; the United Irish Society 
was formed in Ulster, and it was Irish, with no use whatever for Scotch 
ideas or allies I, as an Irishman of Ulster blood and Protes- 
tant religion, stoutly scorn this man and his Scotch-Irish rubbish. I 
am an Irishman, pure and simple, and I protest with vigor against my 
religion being used to deprive me of my nationality by this self-elected 
missionary. I utterly repudiate him and all his kind, and array myself 
under the standard of Grattan and Emmet and Parnell, and take a glori- 
ous pride in remembering that innumerable movements for Irish nation- 
ality against English misrule has been captained by Irish Protestants." 

Mr. Green inthnates that he is going to claim President Jackson as 



57 

Irish of the prefix variety. Surely Mr. Green cannot be acquainted with 
the origin of the Irish Jacksons— the name coiiiinii clown througli the 
centuries from the old Milesian stock. President JacksoA himself was 
assuredly not afflicted with the " Scotch-Irish" heresy. Read his ad- 
dress at Boston, in June, 1833, to the Charitable Irish Society. On that 
occasion President Boyd of the Society, a Protestant, said, addressing 
Jackson: " Irishmen have never been backward in giving support to 
the institutions of this country, nor in showing due respect to the chief 
magistrate thereof; but when the highest office is hela by the sou of au 
Irishman, we must be allowed to indulge in some feelings of pride as 
well as patriotism." 

To this President Jackson responded : " I feel much gratified, sir, at 
this testimony of respect shown me by the Charitable Irish Society of 
this city. It is with great pleasure that I see so many of the country- 
men of my father assembled on this occasion. I have always been proud 
of my ancestry and of being descended from that noble race, and rejoice 
that I am so closely allied to a country which has so much to recommend 
it to the good wishes of the world. Would to God, sir, that Irishmen 
on the other side of the great water enjoyed the comforts, happiness and 
liberty they enjoy here. I am well aware, sir, that Irishmen have never 
been Ijackward in giving their support to the cause of liberty. They 
have fought, sir, for this country valiantly, and I have no doubt would 
fight again were it necessary, but I hope it will be long before the insti- 
tutions of our country need support of that kind. Accept my best wishes 
for the happiness of you all." (See records of the Society). 

How the spirit of old Pat Calhoun must groan when certain writers 
traduce his memory by holding his son up and apart as " Scotch-Irish." 
In his lifetime he surely never dreamt it would come to this. 

A few years since the Protestant Archbishop Plunkett of Ireland, in 
addressing some Presbyterian visitors, said: "I hope that while we 
shall always be very proud of our imperial nationality ; proud of our con- 
nection with the British empire, on the history of which, as Irishmen, 
we have shed some lustre in the past, and from our connection with 
which we have derived much advantage in return, — while we are proud, 
I say, of our imperial nationality, let us never be forgetful of our Irish 
nationality. We may be descended from different races — the Danes, 
Celts, Saxons, and Scots — but we form a combined stratum of our own, 
and tliat is Irish, and nothing else." 

I cannot better extend this communication than by reproducing an 
extract from my original reply to Mr. Green, published in the Boston 
Traveller: An Episcopalian friend once said to me: "I notice that so 
long as an Irishman in this country goes to the Roman Catholic church, 
he is spoken of as Irisli; but should he change his creed and frequent 
the Baptist or the Methodist church, he is immediately referred to by 
his new friends as " Scotch-Irish." This is a fair specimen of the shaky 
ground on which the shibboleth rests. 

Touching upon the subject of Sarah Alexander, mother of the hero of 
Lake Erie, I ask Mr. Green if he would consider himself any the less an 
American because his grandfather happened to be English or Irish or 
Scotch? He avoids a direct answer to this, and good-naturedly brushes 
the question aside. So I must repeat it. 

Mr. Green facetiously remarks that he might be able to establish a 
few Scottish ancestors for myself. I think not. The Murrays (Irish, 
O'Muiredhaigh) are in origin Irish of the Irish. They trace descent 
back many centuries and at different periods have been dynasts in Cork, 
Meath, Derry, Mayo and other districts. They are kin to the 
O'Mahoneys, McCarthys and other historic Irish septs. So you see, 
Mr. Green, how hopeless your task would be. 



58 

Speaking of the name borne by my correspondent, I have known 
sturdy, full-blooded Irishmen, right from Cork and Galway, who were 
named both Green and Greene. Did time allow, perhaps I could trace 
Irish descent on the part of the distinguished librarian. I am sure he 
would be pleased to have me do so. 

As I stated in a former letter, this "Scotch-Irish" fad has, in very 
truth, become an unutterable bore. While some Irish people of imme- 
diate or remote Scottish descent did unquestionably come to these 
shores, not five per cent, qf those claimed as such by current writers 
were really of Scotch extraction. And these were so hopelessly over- 
whelmed in numbers by other Irish who came that any attempt to claim 
exclusive merit for the handful can only result in mortification to the 
claimant. 

The part the Irish — the "mere Irish" — took in our revolutionary 
war is safely recorded in American history. "You have lost America' 
by the Irish!" exclaimed Lord Mouutjoy (1783) in the British parlia- 
ment. Loyalist Galloway when questioned in the Commons as to the 
composition of our patriot army, replied: "I can answer the question 
with precision. They were scarcely one-fourth natives of America, 
about one-half Irish, the other fourth English and Scotch." Ramsey 
declares " the Irish in America were almost to a man on the side of 
independence," and Plovvden says that many of the successes of the 
patriots " were immediately owing to the vigorous exertions and prow- 
ess of the Irish emigrants who bore arms in that cause." 

The precious " Scotch-Irish " of modern times had not yet eventuated, 
it would appear. I cannot close this letter more appropriately than by 
quoting the tribute of Washington's adopted son, G. W. P. Custis, who 
thus speaks of the plain, every day Irish :- - 

"Then honored be the old and good services of the sons of Erin in 
the war of independence. Let the shamrock be entwined with the 
laurels of the revolution, and truth and justice guiding the pen of 
history inscribe on the tablets of America's remembrance, eternal 
gratitude to Irishmen." 

Thomas Hamilton Murray. 

Lawrence, Mass., July 6, 1895. 

The correspondence closed with the following letter from Mr. Green 
in The Worcester Daily Telegram of July 9, 1895 : 

To the Editor of The Telegram :— 

Mr. Murray in his rejoinder, this morning, to my reply to his recent 
communication, says that after a certain statement which I had made 
in the reply, which he quotes, and, in his use of our language, calls an 
" admission," " very little remains to be said." 

He will therefore excuse me if, with a great deal of work crowding 
on me, I answer his last letter briefly, and, without agreeing with or 
disputing the assertions made by him regarding the general subject of 
what he would call the Scotch-Irish myth, merely reply to a question to 
which h.e says I avoided " a direct answer," and write a few words in 
defence of Hon. Leonard A. Morrison. 

Mr. Murray writes: "I ask Mr. Green if he would consider himself 
any the less an American because his grandfather happened to be English 
or Irish or Scotch." 

I had supposed that I had made my answer clear, but, as I do not 
seem to have been understood, I state distinctly that, under the circum- 
stances mentioned, I should not consider myself any the less an 
American. 

I will add that, under the same circumstances, I should feel at perfect 
liberty, did I so choose, to call myself an English-American, Irish- 



59 

American or a Scotch- American, and that I do not believe I should 
resent it if my friends and acquaintances spoke of me in that way. It 
is natural and pleasant for many Americans to have the love which they 
bear the lands of their birth or of their ancestors recognized by an 
appropriate adjective before the name of the beloved country to which 
they now belong. 

Mr. Murray seems to think that Mr. Morrison and all other persons 
■who choose to be known as Scotch-Irish are ashamed of the name 
Irish. 

Is that true ? I am sure it is not. 

If they wish to avoid being known as Irishmen, why do they not call 
themselves Scotchmen? Many of them I am sure, feel that while they 
retained the characteristics of Scotchmen, while living in Ireland, they 
also gained much by coming in contact with the people of Ireland. 

Mr. Morrison is a student of the history of the North of Ireland, and 
is very proud of being descended from ancestors who lived there. He 
knows, of course, as do Mr. Linehan and I, that, according to the old 
traditions, emigrants from Ireland settled Scotland and gave it its 
name. But he believes, and I believe, that the mixture of races, as they 
were to be found in the lowlands of Scotland, frpm which the large 
colonies went into Ireland in the 17th century, was very different from 
the mixture of races to be found among the Irish of the same period. 
Mr. Linehan would probably deny this statement, but I think that peo- 
ple generally who have read of Scotchmen and Irishmen, or who have 
come in contact with them, believe that the two races differed widely 
during the century under consideration, and that the differences in race 
characteristics which showed themselves then are very obvious now. 

Samuel Swett Green. 

l2 Harvard street, July 8, 1895. 



e 



1\ 



30 



